
Beware cutesy two-letter TLDs for your domain name - stickfigure
http://blorn.com/post/29851770158/beware-cutesy-two-letter-tlds-for-your-domain-name
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tomku
I'll add another reason: People will mistakenly go to <yourname>.com in
droves, regardless of how easy it is to remember or how clever the domain/TLD
split is. Having a cute short url is trendy, but it doesn't mean you can avoid
the .com if you actually want people to find your site reliably.

I'll also add that visiting <http://voo.st/> is giving a "Domain Available"
page for me. Completely inexcusable that their error state is advertising for
someone to buy your domain.

~~~
dasil003
I think this problem is rapidly diminishing over time as people just google
everything.

~~~
tomku
It's still better to have the .com anyways, because then you aren't
potentially competing on SEO with someone else with the same brand name and a
"better" domain to use it with. Like it or not, .com domains are the de facto
namespace for consumer-facing products and having the .com for your brand up
for sale or already taken is just asking for problems.

~~~
freshhawk
Do you have any sources on SEO benefit to being a .com instead of a
.net/.co.uk/.me?

I know .edu's get a bump and I wouldn't be surprised if .com's did as well but
I've never had that confirmed.

~~~
nl
_I know .edu's get a bump_

No they don't.

 _While some insist that simply having a .edu domain, regardless of the site’s
quality, content, and incoming links, will give you more weight with the major
search engines, it’s just not true. Who says so? Matt Cutt, a top engineer at
Google, in this video._ [1][2]

and

 _Sadly this whole engagement is based on a faulty assumption: It is not the
Edu-toplevel domain which gives universities such a high relevance in Google
for their references but the backlink-structure of the domains themselves.
Universities have the advantage that on one hand, in most cases they have had
online representations for a long time (stanford.edu for example was
registered 1985) and on the other hand they have lots of content which was and
is linked voluntarily. This is a long time to (unconsciously) build a “great”
backlink-structure in Google's point of view._ [3]

Hopefully that addresses your second point, too:

 _I wouldn't be surprised if .com's did as well but I've never had that
confirmed_

You should be _astonished_ if they did.

Having said that, some early naive autocomplete implementations in browser
address bars bias .com over other extensions. I'm not sure anyone has ever
measured the impact of this.

[1] [http://www.searchenginejournal.com/truth-about-edu-
domains-r...](http://www.searchenginejournal.com/truth-about-edu-domains-
registration-links-and-google-juice/6095/)

[2] The video:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EE163OGjfo&feature=gv](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EE163OGjfo&feature=gv)

[3] <http://www.sistrix.com/blog/751-the-.edu-domain-myth.html>

~~~
freshhawk
Interesting, I picked up some BS SEO tips along the way. Thanks for correcting
me.

------
lotyrin
Yeah. Also, if your TLD belongs to somewhere with a less than stable
government, who knows if they'll just stop caring about you.

And, a portion of your users will always try to go to whatever.com instead of
whatev.er, the worst part is you have no idea how many, but the guy that's
parked the domain probably does. As you grow your business, traffic to the
.com domain will only increase, you'll eventually want to buy it but whoever
owns it will know they've got your balls in a vice, and you'll have no idea if
it's even worth it (except by their word).

It's fine for certain types of businesses (especially those consumed by
machines or the people who love them). Sites with eyes for mass appeal should
probably try to come up with a memorable-yet-unique .com.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
E.g.: bit.ly became bitly.com, although that seems like a branding decision
(with the whole "social link discovery site" thing)

~~~
phillmv
Also, Libya.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Yes, the Qaddafi association probably isn't doing them any favours.

~~~
laconian
The Libyan government barred foreign parties from owning domain names of three
letters or less.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
bit.ly still works though...?

------
FuzzyDunlop
As a complete aside, is 'discuss this on Hacker News' a new offshoot social
network link to pin to your tech blog?

If you're writing an HN-centric post, it surely stands to reason it should be
an Ask-HN article, right?

~~~
stickfigure
"Ask HN" means no links, no images, no formatting. Good for a quick question,
bad for exposition.

I think the "Discuss this on Hacker News" phenomenon reflects that while HN is
a great community and discussion forum, it's a terrible publishing medium.
Probably by design.

------
davesmylie
I was reading this about an hour ago thinking that I was glad I had gone for
the .com and that this sort of thing wouldn't effect me.

However, I just found out that my mail provider (25mail.st) is failing for the
same reason. My app now has no incoming/outgoing email. This is isn't the end
of the world, but a bit frustrating none-the-less.

I guess the lesson here is to beware of both cutesy two-letter TLD's for your
domain name _and_ cutesy two-letter TLD's the in the domain names of the
mission critical services which you subscribe to.

------
mparlane
Customer service private Phone: 08-555 771 00 Weekdays: 08:00 to 21:00
Weekends: 10:00 to 14:00 Mail: customer service (at) bahnhof.se

------
freehunter
Why is it that halfway down the page, while I'm getting into the meat of the
post, a banner pops down from the top blocking the text I'm reading? I like to
keep my current line right at the top of the page, so I have to scroll back
up. Then it disappears! Frustrating.

------
stickfigure
As of this moment, our site is still down. Any suggestions regarding how to
deal with this situation?

Update: Over 8 hours of downtime later, dns is delegating properly again.
Voost is back up.

~~~
voltagex_
Google translate yielded:

Service and Support Technical and General Affairs Office hours: 08:00 to
18:00, Front-hour on-call, 24/7 as an option Tel: 08-555771 55 Fax: 08-555 771
99 Mail: support@bahnhof.se

Sales Questions regarding contracts and RFPs. Hours: 9:00 a.m. to 17:00 Tel:
08-555771 50 Fax: 08-555771 99 Mail: sales@bahnhof.se

------
Lasher
With ICANN opening up .[anything] to the highest bidders this kind of
situation is only going to get worse. Stick with the global TLDs and the major
(stable) country codes.

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TazeTSchnitzel
Depends which. My site's at .me, which, being well hyped and having over
100,000 domains, is probably not going to go down soon.

~~~
freshhawk
That is definitely different. I understand the catchy headline and the
grouping together of newer tlds but it's unfair.

The headline should have read "do at least a modicum of research into a
company you are about to tie your entire brand to before you do so".

This doesn't apply to a lot of "cutesy" two letter tlds and it does apply to a
lot of things that aren't tlds (whatever fly-by-night/about to get aqui-hired
SAAS startups you are considering using as core pieces of your business)

~~~
gdsf34dfsg
How would one do this research?

It's very hard to understand how services operate until there is a failure?

------
pervycreeper
Anybody willing to share which unusual TLDs are reasonably reliable?

~~~
briandear
.me (Macedonia) is very solid. Not a single problem in 3 years.

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seanconaty
No matter what happens .com will always be King.

~~~
skeletonjelly
There's going to be a point where it'll be impossible for new businesses to
choose a domain name that isn't abstracted so far away from their business
name as all the domains are taken. I'm curious as to the what the system will
be like in 5 years. Surely .com can't be king forever?

~~~
thristian
We already thought of this problem - we said "hey, there'll be different
companies with the same name; we should introduce different namespaces so
that, say, a company in Australia and a company in Austria don't clash.

Turns out, end-users want a flat namespace, so everybody has to buy names in
that namespace. Until ICANN opens up the top-level domain space to arbitrary
registrations (instead of the current 'you have to spend $150,000 and run a
registrar' deal), that flat namespace is probably going to be .com.

~~~
bigiain
End-users only want that while it's easiest and it works.

I'd argue that both of those conditions are no longer unambiguously true.

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cfront
There is no quality control in the ICANN root. You grease some palms and
you're in. .pw?

The situation will get much worse if the new gtld program is allowed to
proceed.

Read up on the lawsuit that ICANN is in with Manwin, a porn company. The
courts are getting closer to lifting the veil on ICANN, who has long claimed
they cannot be sued as a commercial entity.

Considering they just banked over 350 million for giving people the right to
be reviewed by ICANN (for what?), this idea of being a "non-profit"
organization and immune from any commercial liability is becoming a bit of a
farce, even to the most naive observer.

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lwat
Better than .com addresses these days though...

