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How important is it to grab all available domain TLDs for somewhat popular site? (Alexa Rank: ~20k)

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migrated from serverfault.com Nov 17 '10 at 15:15

3 Answers

up vote 4 down vote

Getting ALL is a hard full-time job usually only done by companies with more money than sense.

I'd suggest you get all the ones for countries you're currently active in or likely to work in in the next 2 years. If there are any that you just have a 'hunch' about then go for them too. If there are any industry specific ones you way (i.e. .tv) then go for them obviously then also go for the other major ones like .net/org etc.

Other than that I'd leave the rest.

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up vote 1 down vote

I disagree, this is somewhat imporant. the last thing you want is someone to own Google.org and use it as a site to write negative reviews about your site (google.com) get the main tld's for a prominent site. .org .net .com . If you can afford it and have a worldwide audience look at top levels for important countries such as .ca (candada) .co.uk etc.

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That's not the question though. The question isn't whether it's important to grab the most popular TLDs for your market. It's whether it's important to grab ALL available TLDs, which number in the hundreds. Google is a worldwide trademark. They're probably in the top 5 most well-known brands in the world. But for 99.99% of medium to large companies out there, it is completely pointless to own a .tv or .fm or .biz. – Lèse majesté Nov 17 '10 at 18:53
Also, even if you purchase every TLD and SLD of your domain, someone who wants to criticize your company can still use a variation on your domain or a subdomain. Whether they do it from the Tazanian tld or go.to/yourcompany makes no difference. It would be more useful to make sure that your pages are able to push their site off the first search results page. That would be a better use of money than stopping people from buying yourcompany.co.ro or yourcompany.wf. – Lèse majesté Nov 17 '10 at 18:58
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@lese you make some good points, but for the major 3 I always say get them if you can. Plus if you have a good name like banking.com then you want to snatch up every domain name, regardless of TLD. Domain names are like land, there is a very limited amount of what is out there. If you can afford it, hold on to it, if you are not using it, someone will buy it. – Frank Nov 17 '10 at 19:19
Definitely get the major 3 and any local markets you're active in (or plan to branch into; which is why it's smart for google to buy every single regional TLD that is available). But I'm not a big fan of domain speculation as a business model. – Lèse majesté Nov 17 '10 at 20:38
up vote 0 down vote

Agreed with Chopper. Get the global ones and the active country ones. There might be the odd exception, like .co (Colombia) .tv (Tuvalu, tiny island sinking into the sea. The TLD is its chief export, I believe), but even if you do get them all, you're then looking at all of the variations (hyphens, common typos, suffixes). How much time and money have you got?

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