International Domains - which are actually used?
By Steve Poland • April 24, 2008
If you’re buying domains that are for your potential global execution of a website — what domains are realistic to buy? Ones that come to mind are: .es, .co.uk, .de
… but what about others? .it, .in, .nl
… I feel those are realistically used in those countries, but what about these: .co.nz, .de.com, .eu.com, .eu, .asia, .de.com, .uk.com, .no.com, etc.
This place lists a bunch of these TLDs — ...
I’m just wondering, in those other countries — do they still use your ‘.com’, or do you really need all these local TLDs?
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3 Responses to “International Domains - which are actually used?”
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In Turkey although the TLD is com.tr, to get com.tr domain names you should provide official papers to prove that the domain name is a registered trademark, or a company registered to the chamber of commerce in Turkey. Otherwise getting a com.tr domain name is not very possible. Hence com.tr had a good credibility for me, but in the latest months I`m seing crappy domain names with com.tr extension, I guess establishing companies are getting easier in Turkey.
I think it depends on the nature of the website in question. Certainly sites in New Zealand that serve the local market use the .co.nz extension and users looking for local content will expect to go to a .co.nz domain name.
Not to mention of course that Google weights local sites in local search results, ie. when I use google.co.nz then local domains are weighted more in the results.
Depends on what your site is. If it’s the same content and language regardless of country use a .com. If you’re localising then get the local domain.
For example Amazon.com is the US store whilst Amazon.co.uk shows you UK products. .uk.com and similar others are never used in the UK, unless you wish to confuse people.