FabianPattberg.com

This is the third part of our domain name series started two weeks ago.

Today I would like to provide an overview of the different domain extensions one can choose from, what I believe are the best uses of these domain extensions and what domain extensions should be important to you if you want to start a website.

The Leader Of The Pack “.com”
This is by far the most popular extension and was originally intended to be the domain extension for commercial business in the US. The .com is now the ultimate extension to have and is worth considerably more then others. If you have the choice always choose a .com.

The Second Tier. The “.net” and “.org”
.net and .org are at the moment really secondary domain extensions unfortunately. This is due to the .com boom over the last 10 years. The .net was intended to be a domain extension for networks and is often used by IT people. The .org was intended for an organisation is general. The .org is now mostly preferred by charitable organisations, NGOs and websites with a community flair and purpose. I really like the .net and .org and have a lot of these names in my portfolio but these extensions will never be as popular as the .com unfortunately.

The Newcomers’ .info, .biz and many others
These are the up and coming extensions that are meant to be making it easier for the ever growing internet community to be to more topic specific. .info is meant to be for information websites, .biz for businesses and their corporate websites. There are a lot more of these new extensions out there but I believe only the .info and .biz will be popular in the next 5-10 years time.

Country Specific Domain Extensions
Then there are the country specific extensions like .us, .co.uk and .de only to name three of them. These are domain extensions that are great if you have a German only website (.de) for example or if you are primarily doing business in the UK (co.uk). The only danger with these country specific domain extensions is that they are not very likely to have a global appeal and therefore will in the long run limit your general brandability across the web. This is my opinion only of course and I am sure that there are examples that can prove me wrong.

All in all it fair to say that the internet user now has a lot of different domain extensions to choose from.
My advice is this. If you have .com name then this should be your first choice. The .net is great for social media and technology. The .org is great for the whole business around green topics and sustainability. If you have not been able to get the name you wish as a .com, .net or .org then I would go with an .info or .biz. If you choose to be country specific in terms of your business outreach then a country specific extension as mentioned above might suit you.

But stay away from all the others. All of these new extensions are just ways to get your money out of he pockets nothing more.