.CO what is the verdict?

[cbk]

Or is it still too early to tell.


For developed sites has it been good for SEO purposes like expected?

Any good sample startups?

Has anyone included in their marketing campaign that it is a "COmpany" domain?

Has or will the public be convinced it is short for COmpany?

Is it under .info but better than .us or .mobi for reselling?

What is the future?

[dcristo]

I think its overhyped and no one will be talking about this extension in a year.

[Acro]

I think its overhyped and no one will be talking about this extension in a year.

It's already been a year since the .co launch with more than 1 million domains registered.

[dcristo]

So Acro, tell me what's great about this extension, apart from being a ccTLD lol.

[katherine]

I think it will fare better than the majority of previously released extensions, at least it has a natural market so it's not an artificial TLD.
But yes, it's overhyped and as usual the majority of domainers will lose money because they are chasing a dream.

There are no major players or high-profile websites and notable use is anecdotal. This is where .co is not unlike other alt TLDs.

[Gerry]

Or is it still too early to tell.


For developed sites has it been good for SEO purposes like expected?

Any good sample startups?

Has anyone included in their marketing campaign that it is a "COmpany" domain?

Has or will the public be convinced it is short for COmpany?

Is it under .info but better than .us or .mobi for reselling?

What is the future?

I think Overstock.com abandoning their multimillion dollar campaign for O.co speaks volumes.

ccTLD's are great for domain hacks. But you will have a hard time branding or rebranding a major enterprise like Overstock in today's environment.

Yes, I have seen many O.co commercials. But they were being broadcast on low volume, ill timed, commercial air space.

You could find their commercials and attempts at rebranding on HGTV, DIY (do it yourself) network and others for the designers and home decor audience. It reached a small segment of the market and they tried to brand themselves as a designer/decor outlet. Pair this up with commercials like Home Depot, Macy's, and others in the same segments and you know which ones the consumer is going to associate themselves with.

There are tons of successes out there with rebranding (think KFC). But they did it nationally with ads, commercials, signage, redoing all their physical brick and mortar buildings, interiors of stores, clothing, NASCAR, and so on. They rebranded themselves and played their commercials in prime time slots on national networks, specialty networks, sponsorships, and so on.

I think O.co will go down as a study of how NOT to attempt to rebrand yourself.

I have big issues when domain extensions are hyped to domainer and registrars as an alternative to something, in this case (and in the case of .cm) an alternative to .com. Seriously??? .cm and .co are typos of .com? What's next? .ed is a typo of .de, ln a typo of ln and .nc a typo of .cn and GREAT for North Carolina businesses.

This all plays well into something I have been saying for perhaps a decade or more...

Domainers do not control the internet. They just wish they did.

Consumerism and consumer habits dictate the internet usage. And that's just how it is.

[dcristo]

IMO the new geo extensions have more potential then this nonsense.

[David G]

Basically the only person who will do very well with .co when all is said and done is Michael Mann since he more or less cornered the .co top distionary word market and has already made a ton on resales.

I have several .CO mostly only as defensive registrations (they get very little if any traffic and see no spilllover traffic at all from .com - contrary to what has been claimed by the .co fans). Not positive about renewing them.

Can see .CO going steadily downhill over next few years. The Overstock.com story says a lot.

[dcristo]

C'mon Dave, we all know you make a boat load of money by being a sheep. There have been 1 million registrations for this extension, they can't be all wrong.

[bmugford]

C'mon Dave, we all know you make a boat load of money by being a sheep. There have been 1 million registrations for this extension, they can't be all wrong.

.MOBI has 1M+, .BIZ has 2M+, .INFO has 8M+.

Domain counts mean very little when it comes to reseller value.

Brad

[dcristo]

.MOBI has 1M+, .BIZ has 2M+, .INFO has 8M+.

Domain counts mean very little when it comes to reseller value.

Brad

I was being sarcastic, but in all seriousness, I would value .INFO the highest out of all those extensions.

[bmugford]

Basically the only person who will do very well with .co when all is said and done is Michael Mann since he more or less cornered the .co top distionary word market and has already made a ton on resales.

I have several .CO mostly only as defensive registrations (they get very little if any traffic and see no spilllover traffic at all from .com - contrary to what has been claimed by the .co fans). Not positive about renewing them.

Can see .CO going steadily downhill over next few years. The Overstock.com story says a lot.

The hype has clearly died down quite a bit.

Recently you had the Pool .CO landrush re-auction with very mediocre results.
The Overstock.com news just confirms the consumer confusion with .COM.

Then you have other major websites used in marketing like Top10.co (Bulby - Best New Platform), which now just forwards back to the .COM.

The closeness to .COM is a major downside for branding. At least other extensions like .TV, .ME, have their own identity.

Like you said, the major winners are people like Mike Mann. If you were able to get top category defining terms, without competition, it is much easier to win.

Even Juan Calle said (http://www.cointernet.co/blog/blip-radar) -

"Yup, if you're a domainer, listen to those guys. Stick to .COM."

I will hand it to the .CO registry though as they have been excellent at marketing and promotion, but at the end of the day I expect a bunch of people to be left holding the bag.

Brad

[rngrdanny22]

I was being sarcastic, but in all seriousness, I would value .INFO the highest out of all those extensions.

Why do you value .INFO so highly? Not arguing with you, just would like to hear your thoughts!

[dcristo]

Why do you value .INFO so highly? Not arguing with you, just would like to hear your thoughts!

Put simply, I think the extension serves a purpose. I tend to associate .com with commercial sites and .info with informational sites. So many searchers are looking for information online, the world wide web is a huge online library. Although you can gauge search intent based on the specific search query, you can connect with the searcher with the help of the domain extension. If you were looking for information on a certain topic, would you check out .co.uk .biz .com .info etc? Sites with ccTLD serve a purpose but outside of niche local communities and travel sites there use is limited. If I was looking for information that was not relevant to a specific location .INFO would be right up there with one of the first SERPs I'd click on to discover more information. That being said, the value has nothing to do with the # of registrations, clearly the cost of new .INFO registrations has a lot to do with why so many have been registered.

[Ulysses]

.co is ols news now, the new pretender is on its way .xxx

Enjoy the hype on this one, the next gravy train for some.

[katherine]

The closeness to .COM is a major downside for branding. At least other extensions like .TV, .ME, have their own identity.

That is a problem, especially in America where .com is go ingrained.
I think it's also problematic in the countries with third level domain names like .co.xx
For instance in the UK I'm sure many people will think it's in fact .co.uk and the .uk was left out.

.co is ols news now, the new pretender is on its way .xxx

Enjoy the hype on this one, the next gravy train for some.

So true.
And you can count on Bob Parsons to pimp the next TLD. Not long ago he was pimping .me before .co.
He won't be left holding the bag.

I'm sure many newbies genuinely believe in .co but it's because they don't have the experience of running a critical business on a standalone .co without the .com to back up.

[dcristo]

So the big question is, how many .co does Acro own? Any private reported domain sales you care to share with us? lol

[David G]

I can report from my experience with several .co's there is basically ZERO bleed and spill-over from the .com going to the .co.

In fact, involving one of my .co's the .com version (wish I owned it) is highly successful and one of the highest traffic sites according to Alexa but gets no obvious spill-over traffic from the .com when I look at its stats. However, mistyped traffic going to .co from .com was always a major reason to hype registering the .co's but from what I see it's not a valid assumption.

[mrcurly]

Just been wondering, has anybody successfully secured a .Co domain and sold it to the owner of the .Com version ? Like Shoes.Co sold to the owner of Shoes.Com ??

Would love to know if anybody has heard anything.

Cheers

[David G]

There may have been a small number of .co sales to the .com owners but based on hands-on expereience with several .co domains/sites (and not seeing traffic going to the .co's) I would say (except in rare cases) defensive regstration of .co is based almost entirely on paying no more than reg fee and if already reg'd a sale to the .com owner would be very unlikely.

Just been wondering, has anybody successfully secured a .Co domain and sold it to the owner of the .Com version ? Like Shoes.Co sold to the owner of Shoes.Com ??

Would love to know if anybody has heard anything.

Cheers