What's the best domain to use when .com .net .org are taken???

It depends on your business model.

For myself, I'd take .info ... but I'd be developing an "information site" on it, because that's my business model.

".info" doesn't rank any worse than ".com" or any other top-level domain - there are a few people who'll tell you it does, and they're all mistaken: Google and Matt Cutts say that it doesn't - and they say it loudly and clearly and at every possible opportunity.

I asked all the people on my various lists, last year, what sort of top-level domain-name they prefer to see on a site, and was surprised how many of those who expressed a preference said that ".info" gave them the most confidence, because they regard my sites as a source of "information". Not too surprising, really, of course, but at the time I'd forgotten that customers think totally differently from marketers, and I had my silly "preferring .com hat" on.

A lot of potential customers dislike .com's, anyway, because they think it looks like someone "just trying to sell things" rather than providing information and recommendations. Of course there are still some people (marketers, again!) who imagine, in spite of all Google's and Matt Cutts' persistent efforts to expose this as an urban myth of internet marketing, that .info domains are somehow disadvantaged, compared with .com's, in SEO terms. It's nonsense and it always has been, but what I'm doing wouldn't suit people who still choose to believe it. I think a lot of marketers feel that ".com's evoke trust", but a lot of my customers and prospective customers feel they evoke "pure commercialism" rather than "information". Just a different perspective.

But ... there are other reasons for preferring .com, of course - especially resale.

.co will be good if you want to rank highly on Google in Colombia, I'm sure.

That said, I've read here recently that .co has somehow been "upgraded" now, from being the domain extension for Colombia to being a top-level domain, like .com, .org, .net and others. It's not relevant to me, personally, so I haven't verified this information anywhere, but if it's true, then even a .co would be the same, for SEO purposes.

Google says openly, and repeatedly, and quite forcefully, that neither hyphenation nor domain-extensions (other than specific country ones) are in any way relevant to SEO at all (poor Matt Cutts must be going blue in the face from saying it all so many times, on video, in writing, on his own blog, on Google's blog and so on), but there are still Warriors who say even he's wrong about it. You'll never get people to agree about these subjects.

I find that my .info sites do very well. Resale value doesn't concern me, but I do also tend to own the .com's (which I register at the time I start my sites, just to make sure that nobody else can), but I simply re-direct the .com to the .info and use the .info for my site.

But I would stay away from country-specific extensions unless you want specifically to target those countries, and to rank highly on their local Google searches, at the possible expense of other things.

If you are targeting a specific country, then a county specific TLD, geo-targeted to that country and hosted on a server with an IP address for that country will give you a good foothold ahead of generic TLDsm for local search.

I remember reading Matt Cutts saying (I just can't find it now) that TLDs were NOT weighted in search results, but that they may be in the future - referring specifically to cheaper TLDs like .ws and even .info - due to the volume of spammy registrations/

This MAY be a dumb suggestion - I have NOT tried this out, so take care before you apply this.

(Got the idea looking at del.icio.us and some other such site names... including a couple used by other IM'ers).

You could always create subdomains as you wish - so what about picking something like
dogtr.aining.com?

Another alternative - pick dogtraining.in, and create subpages like

dogtraining.in/Seattle
dogtraining.in/NewYork

and so on - you might find it works quite well for SEO purposes.
> Might not be your main site - but use that to feed some link love to your money-site...

Thanks for the replies all. I recently bought a domain as a .co because I was able to get the domain with exact keyword phrase in it. I also bought one with the exact phrase as a .us for a different site.

So, from what I gather my .co will not rank well if people are searching at Google from US, Canada, etc. and that is actually my market. I may grab another domain and forward the .co to it next.

How about .tel and .tv domains? Anybody try those yet?

it depends upon in which country you are going to provide dog training services. if you are best in uk then you must need to register .co.uk if you select .in then it will totally useless for you. so please tell me for which country you want to promote your services then i will suggest u more ideas.....