Does the .biz internet top-level domain deserve to be taken seriously?

Question

.com is the most preferable TLD most of the time, so many people choosing domain names have to pick between desiredname.something_else or totallydifferent.com.

From wikipedia:

The biz TLD was created to relieve some of the demand for domain names in the com top-level domain, and to provide an alternative for businesses whose preferred domain name in com had already been registered by another party.

.org at least implies an organization, whereas .com is the most generic 'commercial'. But .biz seems like a total duplicate that doesn't seem in widespread use <pun>and deserves to be closed. </pun>. Does .biz have any advantages over .com? Are .biz domains worth registering if .com is already taken?

Answer 1

I don't think they are worth registering at all.

If yourdomain.com is already taken try something different but that still ends with the .com

IMO the only other domains are worth registering are the country specific domain. If you start a business in Italy (and you planned to sell there) it's much better to get a yourbusiness.it domain rather than a .com, for two reasons:

• people in a specific country are more used to enter the country code domain than the .com one. As long as they are searching for local business. So in Germany people expects to find your business at yourbusiness.de more than at yourbusiness.com. Same thing in belgium .be, in italy .it, in France .fr, and so on.

• on country specific Google sites you might rank higher. When searching on Google.it I always get the impression .it domains are generally ranking higher than .com domains. Obviously the website must be written in Italian. You can read very interesting stuff on Google official site here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/03/working-with-multi-regional-websites.html and also here about Multi-regional and multilingual sites

Answer 2

.bis is not worth using.

.biz was originally created to be just as good as .com in order to solve the problem of all the good .com names already being taken - but it didn't work out for them.

.biz is not taken seriously, it is not taken seriously by potential customers, it is not taken seriously by vendors and it's not taken seriously by search engines.

(I have one .biz, you should hear the responses I get when I tell people the domain name).

Answer 3

Technically the .biz TLD is every bit as good as .com since they do, and mean, the same thing. Having said that, .biz seems to be on almost no one's radar. It rarely is discussed as an alternative to .com whenever a prefered .com domain name is taken. Typically .net, or a more convoluted or longer .com, being prefered.

Whether to use a .biz or alternative depends on what all of your available options are. If you can find an alternative .com to use it probably is your best bet as .coms tend to come first to mind over .biz and everything else. Users are more likely to type .com just out of habit. But if you can't find a suitable .com a .biz may be your best bet as a short, memorable .biz with good keywords in it (for SEO) trumps having a .com just for the sake of having a .com.