Should You Buy a .CO Domain Name?

With the growing popularity of personal websites, and the fact that nearly all businesses have some form of a Website, trying to purchase a new .com name has become increasingly difficult. This week, .co domains were released for purchase on sites such as NetworkSolutions.com, GoDaddy.com and Register.com.

What’s a .co name? Essentially it is the same as a .com name — anyone can buy any available domain. In contrast to .net, .biz, and .us extensions, the .co is widely used in a number of countries including the UK (.co.uk) and Japan (.co.jp). This international use will help build credibility of this extension much faster than the .net and .biz extensions.

Who should buy a .co name? First, if you missed out on a great .com name for your business, you should buy a .co right away. We picked up ThinkTankCreative.co this morning. If you want to host a URL shortener on your site, you should pick one up also. Mashable.com has reported that Twitter purchased t.co for use as a link service.

There is one other group who should immediately purchase available .co names: associations. So often, associations go by their acronym equivalent to their full name. The National Association of Security Companies (NASCO), for example, should immediately snatch up nas.co. American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), you might want to consider grabbing as.co.

Domain names are cheap — just $29-39/year for these new extensions. Even if you hold on to the URL for three years and never use it, you’ve at least guaranteed that your competition doesn’t grab your name and use it to pull members and clients away from your business.