I considered using a ‘dot co’ domain for a 2014 project, and went so far as to place a bid on an expensive domain. After mulling over it for awhile, I ultimately decided that it wasn’t time to embrace dot co… yet.
The .co seems to be gaining traction in 2015. Seems like I see a new one every day (today I noticed rad.co). However, most people outside of the tech/design industries are still not familiar with dot co domains. Hell, even Google doesn’t seem to like ’em (see below)!
The .co is the country domain assigned to Columbia. It wasn’t until 2010 that dot cos became available for registry around the globe. Since then, the Go.co marketing campaign has sought to boost its popularity.
Despite the increasing use of .co, the majority of web users (aka not web nerds like me who pay attention to this stuff) will still type dot com into their web browser by default. That means that not only will they fail to find your site, but they might instead land on your competitor over at the dot com address, thereby adding insult to injury. According to this Redditor, you can lose up to 25% of your traffic to your dot com competitor. Not cool!
There is a threshold of awareness for any new domain suffix. I don’t think .co has crossed the threshold yet, but it’s close. The more it gets used, the more familiar audiences will become with it. So if you choose to use one, you’re also choosing to help further its campaign for recognition.
Byron Meinerth says
Do you mean Colombia?