The Practical and Unavoidable Inevitability of Generic Top Level Domains

All top-level domains (TLDs) are treated equally, although Google sees geo-specific TLDs as more relevant to a specific region. TLDs include:

1. com
2. net
3. org
4. edu
5. gov

There is always a concern that the public may be suspicious of a domain suffix that they have not encountered before. People are used to typing .com, however, all of the good .com names have already been taken. To get the domain name that they really want, individuals are turning to top-level country code domains. In many cases, the geo-specific TLDs are a good fit for their business, such as Armenia's .am, which is ideal for radio stations. Tech companies often use like .io, the British Indian Ocean Territory domain, due to its input/output acronym. Montenegro's .me extension is popular as well, since it by companies in a variety of ways.

All of the two, three and four character .com domain names are already taken. Some are for sale by domain-name resellers, where they are more expensive than if a person just registered one. Business owners are deciding that a .com alternative is better than a long, unpronounceable domain name that does not suggest what the site is about, is the better choice. Short, easy to remember domain names make it easier for people to tell their friends about a website.

Major brands have .io domains, although they are in addition to their .com domains. Corporations may buy their brand name as a domain name in as many TLDs as they can afford to keep anyone else from purchasing them. Google, Coke and Canon all have .io domains.

Generic Top Level Domains (gTDLs), such as .money and .travel, offer another option, however, the domains can cost $185,000 per gTLD, so they are beyond the reach of small businesses.

After all of this is said and done, one has to remember that branding and content matter more than URL, both in the eyes of SERPs and your users.