What is a top-level domain? Per ICANN, there are currently 1,532 TLDs for businesses to choose from. However, if you’re buying a new domain name, the TLD you choose will not affect your search rank. Will a non-dotcom TLD help or hurt your company’s brand? They might also be more likely to notice and care about the TLD you choose. Overall, as different TLDs become more common, your customers will likely be equally comfortable with whatever you choose. Questionable price increases are one of the many reasons that choosing a reliable, ethical domain registrar is important. Are there any risks with a new TLD? As detailed by Moz, direct traffic sometimes includes a variety of scenarios like misattributed search traffic, “dark social” traffic, non-web documents, and improper redirects. Not only could this lead to a higher price, but this might make you more prone to losing your domain name if you’re forced to use an unreliable registrar.
Choosing a domain name for your business often goes something like this:
1. After hours of brainstorming, you discover the perfect domain name only to find out it was registered 20 years ago.
2. After a few more hours, you settle on another choice only to find out a payment of $50,000 was required.
3. After more hours and more iterations, you end up buying a .com domain name that you don’t feel great about.
This often happens due to the limited supply of top-level domains (TLDs) combined with the recommendation that all businesses should choose a .com or country-code TLD. But does having a common domain extension still matter? Should businesses still buy a .com domain name?
What is a top-level domain?
Before digging into the pros and cons of .coms vs. other TLDs, here’s a brief refresher on domain name terminology.
A top-level domain or TLD is the last segment of a domain name. For example, the most common TLD is .com. Other popular TLDs include .gov, .net, .and .edu. There are also country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs) like .ca (Canada), .uk (United Kingdom), and .in (India).
One other note is that top-level domains are sometimes referred to as domain extensions or domain endings. For brevity, I’ll call them TLDs going forward. To learn more about other terms like subdomains and second-level level domains, check out our guide on What is a Domain?
Per ICANN, there are currently 1,532 TLDs for businesses to choose from. That’s an almost endless number of combinations. But should businesses use one that doesn’t end with .com? Read on to learn more about the pros and cons of non-dotcoms.
Do TLDs matter for SEO?
One of the most commonly asked questions about new TLDs is whether they affect SEO. Here’s a direct, 36-pixel sized quote from Google’s Guide on Traditional vs. New Domain Endings:
“Using a new domain ending will not hurt your search presence.”
This makes sense when you think about all the different ways Google can analyze page quality like backlinks, content analysis, search metrics, traffic metrics, and 200 other proven or theorized factors detailed by Backlinko. Another much simpler way to confirm Google’s stance on new TLDs is to notice that they own and use many like https://abc.xyz/, https://docs.new, and https://domains.google.
In other words, .com domains do not rank higher in search due to their TLD. However, they might indirectly rank higher due to Google’s preference for aged brands.
An aged brand is a website or company with a long track record of quality content, frequent updates, and technical uptime. If most other factors are close or equal, a page on an established brand will almost always rank higher than a page on a newer, less proven brand. And seeing that .com domains still make up 46.8% of ranked TLD usage per W3Techs, most aged brands are likely to be .coms.
So if you’re looking to purchase an existing website, a .com domain name might indirectly provide more search value. However, if you’re buying a new domain name, the TLD you choose will not affect your search rank.
Will a non-dotcom TLD help or hurt your company’s brand?
This is a very tough, subjective question with three likely answers:
1. A non-dotcom TLD will help customers remember your brand and serve as a unique differentiator.
2. A non-dotcom TLD will make your brand seem suspect and less reputable.
3. Customers won’t notice your TLD or won’t care about it.
The most frequent answer for your brand probably depends on customer demographics, traffic sources, and other factors.
For example, if you have a tech-savvy audience, they’re probably more likely to be familiar and comfortable…
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