domain name "CO"

Hi Jim,

I haven't used one, at all.

It was originally (and still is, really) the national domain extension for Colombia. But a year or two ago Google announced that it was treating it, for all ranking/SEO purposes, as being a top-level international domain, just like .me (Montenegro) and .tv (Tuvalu). There are no adverse ranking effects at all - as far as Google goes, anyway.

Some people, unable to register the .com they really wanted, use them as an alternative for any type of website for which they'd otherwise have used a .com extension. (And of course many Colombian businesses still use them, as well).

Of course there are still other considerations about using one. Principally (the reason I haven't tried one myself) the fact that it might be a second-best choice to build a business on a domain extension of which the .com variant already belongs to someone else, in case one loses some type-in traffic, in future, to the owner of the .com, and so on, with .co being not being nearly so well known. They're a bit on the expensive side too, perhaps? Apart from those points, I'm not aware of any real disadvantages with them.

I would really stick with the .com or .net and in som cases even .org domains. They are commonly known and tend to rank faster than other domains. I would even consider using hyphens before a .co domain.

I have one now. I've had several. I don't care much for the price and as for the extension, it works as well for ranking as any other. The one thing that I don't like is people automatically type in .com, so you could lose some traffic. Say I tell you that my domain is somethingorother.co ... it is very natural to type in somethingorother.com without even thinking about it. If they visit from a link that's not a problem.

Think the question been answered above but I would definitely reinforce the fact you may lose traffic to the .com if that already been taken as many will get you mixed up with it.

Therefore get the .com if possible.