I gringe every time one of the choosing a Domain threads shows up and the majority just shouts .com and repeating old myths over and over.
I want to throw a few thoughts into this, and hopefully clear some things up.
People dont memorize/type Domains.
They remember your Name or Brand, or in worst case just a few characters of it. That means they ether "lucky search" you (as in type what they know into the adress bar) or (if they already visited you) will start typing what they remember of your domain and expect the browser to complete it.
Thats why "getpocket.com" is really a bad alternative. I have to type the whole word "pocket" until my Chrome bar even suggests it. And even then it shows "pocket bike" as first result for me in the suggestions. In opposite to just "po" when they would use pocket.co or anything. Google chromes fuzzy search in the adressbar is highly favoring the start of a domain. Prefixed are therefore bad Mkey.
I see this sounds different to what most people tell. But lets look at some numbers:
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This are my user sessions in the last 30 days. You see only 50k are direct visitors, even more interesting is that only 10k of them visited the startsite. So most of them most likely used a Bookmark.
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Lets also look at Alexa while my site skyrocketed with its .science domain. The correspondending .com is still irrelevant
No SEO benefit.
It is all about building your brand and not the TLD you choose. With my above example i am sure that whatever combination my users type google will lead them to me, this appeared to be a rather successful recipe (My brand contains keywords, i realize that does not work for anyone this way).
Google and other Search engines do not favor .com domains ether. Officially all cTLDs are equal. That includes .org, .net, .biz, .io, .co...
"But people trust .com more!"
That is true to some degree especially for older users. And i dont want to say to choose whatever TLD you can easily get. My point is that .com is not that important anymore as it was at some point.
If you have a international brand or company .com may is still the safest choice, just for the professional image. But if you create a info website, web service, app, random blog or whatever there is no reason to not look out for other TLD options.
Also local domains, i dont get why you would use a .com for your local services in the U.S. .us or .nyc would be way more fitting and on the point while even including a relevant keyword within the TLD and bring some geo SEO benefits. But thats a whole different topic.
Have any numbers to proof me wrong?
Let me know! I am happy to learn.
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