Have we reached the point that a mysite.net is as good as mysite.com?

Question

Although not strictly programming related, this is something I believe us web developers think about a lot more than most people, so I wanted to ask this community.

When trying to find domains to launch my projects on I'm still convinced that I must find an available .COM and that perfectname.net is not as good as almostperfectname.com.

Am I wrong?

A lot more .NETs are free these days when compared to its big brother: .COM

Do you still while away the hours looking for the best .COM you can get?

What is your opinion on .NET versus .COM?

I often hear: "People will always type [name-they-remember].COM, they will forget it ends in .WHATEVER"

Is there any evidence or research indicating this is or isn't true?

Answer 1

I think that .com is still preferable - there are some site I use that don't end in .com, and I tend to go to the wrong site a lot.

Answer 2

Having a higher pagerank is more important than the TLD

Answer 3

Wether you use a .COM or .NET address would depend a lot on your marketing. If say your product was "Forever.NET" and you always marketed and used the name as "Forever.NET" then it would make sense to get Forever.NET and not worry about the .COM. But I think the best advice is really to grab as many of the variants of whatever name you choose to prevent others from hijacking your investment.

Answer 4

I predict it will become increasingly irrelevant as we more and more onto the web.

There'll be less typing addresses and more clicking links.

Anything left in RL will have QR tags anyway!

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