Domain Name Selection and extension for your business

This question keeps coming up.  Even though Google has published a guideline regarding how it treats domains and their extensions.

A quick outline of what that guideline states is the following:

Generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs)

Unless a top level domain is registered as a country code top level domain (ccTLD) with ICANN, Google will treat any TLD that resolves through the IANA DNS root zone as a gTLD.

But country codes are different, but not all country codes.  According to Google, some country codes are treated as a Generic TLD.

.ad
.as
.bz
.cc
.cd
.co
.dj
.fm
.io
.la
.me
.ms
.nu
.sc
.sr
.su
.tv
.tk
.ws

Meaning that a .fm or a .ad is treated as a .com domain name.   Now there are merits to discuss regarding a non-.com domain name.   It tends to be harder to attract links, be subjected to mistypes towards the .com version of the domain name and other issues surrounding the use of a non-com domain name.

Another issue is the fact that some browsers automatically go for the .com domain name, or automatically fill in the .com for many individuals, especially on a mobile device.

The end result is though Google technically will treat a .cc as a .com,  if someone has the .com version of the domain name the chances are high that that individual most likely will sap the strength of your domain name.

In other words, the suggestion is though technically Google treats the domains the same,  everything else (from human error to hard-coded aspects of the browser) don’t.

Stick to a .com for now, until the world is more familiar with other TLD’s ….  that includes the new ones, such as .space