.biz Domain Names

[ryankeith77]

Is it better to have a website like X.biz OR Xbiz.com?

[sherrieb]

Go for the .com, it is the most understood and used by the general public.

[howinfo]

If it is one letter .biz and it is still available, definitely go for it.

[sheep]

.com >>>> .biz

[theultimate1]

Sorry to resurface this thread from the dead... but I have a similar query too.

I'm looking at this interesting market, and this is what I see:
The{two_words}.com is booked
The{two_words}biz.com is available and so is The{two_words}.biz

The idea here is to provide a networking community for people involved in this particular business/professional area. I would appreciate any feedback on which one should I choose...

Should I choose The{two_words}biz.com or The{two_words}.biz? Please advise

And no... the two words are not Offline Marketing

[madmmd]

obviously xbiz.com is better.. i rarely see .biz domains in SERPs.. around 2% of the time.. maybe less..

[Mr Precision]

First google ".com" and take a quick look at the urls. Now google ".biz" and do the same. This may be a dummy method that I just came up with on the fly, but it seems to prove a point, at least to me.

[webapex]

Although the TLD extension is said to not matter to the search engine ranking algorithm, .biz as well as .info domains have in particularly developed a reputation for being abused by shady operators and might start with a ranking disadvantage.

I suppose the ranking of .com names might be a sort of chicken and egg story, are they so popular because they rank well, or are the top results .com domains because the owners have made a greater investment in improving their search ranking because a .com is more worth the investment.

[DireStraits]

Originally Posted by theultimate1

Should I choose The{two_words}biz.com or The{two_words}.biz? Please advise

Definitely the latter, in my opinion.

There's no point in adding unnecessary letters/words to your domain if it's available for registration as-is with another perfectly good extension/TLD, such as .biz, .info and so on. Especially if the TLD relates to the nature/purpose of your site - which .biz clearly does in this case!

Don't worry about SEO concerns for using other, less popular gTLDs of this type; Google does not penalise them or otherwise put them at a disadvantage. That is a mere - albeit widely believed - myth.

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by madmmd

i rarely see .biz domains in SERPs.. around 2% of the time.. maybe less..

This is because marketers don't use them for sites they want to rank, so there are far fewer of them there in the first place, not because they don't rank as well!

Google and Matt Cutts have gone blue in the face from telling people at every conceivable opportunity, in writing, on video, in blogs etc. etc. that domain extensions don't affect SEO/ranking at all. (Apart from country-specific extensions on local Google searches within those specific countries, of course).

The members here who have previously worked on search engine algorithms invariably say the same, too.

And so do all the standard authority SEO text-books.

The idea that ".biz might not rank as well as .com" is simply an urban myth of internet marketing.

There may, in some cases, be other reasons for preferring a .com (such as resale), but SEO/ranking isn't one of them.

Originally Posted by theultimate1

Should I choose The{two_words}biz.com or The{two_words}.biz? Please advise

For ranking purposes, clearly the latter, in my opinion - the{two_words}.biz.

It's even better not to have the "the" in front of the keywords, if you can avoid it. "keywordkeywordextra.ext" is better for SEO than "extrakeywordkeyword.ext": in other words, having the major keyword at the start of the domain-name is better (unless the word "the" is actually part of the keyword).