dot co domain names?

I would say: Go for the .com! It's the most popular around, and people got the .com in their blood when they type your domain into a browser, even me! so go for .com!

Cos people always miss out the m? lol.

Its a new TLD. Its good that they are expensive. As we can vouch the good keyword based domains easily or everyone would just jump and take all of them. With time the costs will come down quite similar to that of .com's which were quite expensive in the beginning.

The .CO, for example (Columbian ccTLD) was made available for public registration in June and July of 2010.

I will give you 2 viewpoints:

Landrush hit, the prices were kept high to avoid the spam-registrations that happened for other newly-available public TLD's (such as .info, .TV (although still expensive).

There are still many different single/double keyword available for .CO, and lots of registrations still.

They still have lots of viability, and even though technically still Columbia ccTLD, they are open to the public to register, and are therefore given equal weight on search engine as .com, .net, .info etc. :: newly available means you don't have to be as clever when registering a keyword.CO, instead of longtail-keyword-phrase.COM.

Standard SEO still applies, and normal competition analysis/etc. : just because the shorter single keyword.CO might be available doesn't mean you automatically rank for it. But it is a nice alternative.

Now, my contrary viewpoint is the psychological perspective that .COM still holds, predominantly. US especially are not really "open" to ccTLD's, overall. Most people think .COM IS the internet.

And I feel confident I can speak to the majority of "Most people"; I did dialup and DSL AND cable internet supporting the "average customer" getting online for the first time; I KNOW who "they" are, folks! And THEY think the innernet IS .COM. You can TELL them to go to something.net, and they WILL type in www.something.NET.COM.... Ya'll folks here are a smart batch. The average newcomer is not.

For that reason alone, I say .COM, not because of the rank-ability on the search engines but b/c of the psychological factor (and let's face it: even IF people wanted to type in .CO, they will automagically slip-up and pop that "M" in there (ta-da, .COM!)

I have a batch of very nice .co names that are doing very well in the serps and are exactly the keywords I wanted.

The reason they are more expensive are stated above.

Interesting reading this article about an upcoming marketing push by Godaddy for the .co extension:

Who's Bowled over from the Super hype about .co? - Fortune Tech

I see a number of marketers rode this train early.

I have to admit my limited knowledge (of the lesser TLDs) is one .info that I find almost impossible to rank. But that's hardly a decent scale test - I see others that do well with them. And I haven't given up on it yet!

Yep, exactly as stated above. Supply and Demand baby . Get em now though, eventually everyone will catch on

This is my big question. Being country TLD's, how do they perform globally. I'm not exactly looking to dominate the Columbian search results.

This could be my answer.

Are they as easy to rank in the SERPs as .com, .net, and .org's?

This is the only thing keeping me from buying them.

I found it a tad amusing that the biggest thing that stood out to me in the whole promo video teaser was the <.com > button at the end of the godaddy logo.

Wow, I just picked up about 12 .co domains in my hotel niche. I can't believe someone esle didn't nail these down earlier.