The Importance Of A .Com

A website without a good domain name and web address extension is less likely to rank well in search engines and command traffic.

Of all web address extensions, the .com extension is the most popular.  The dot-com or.com address is a generic top level domain and one of the first web address extensions used; the others are .edu for education websites, .gov for government websites, .mil for military, .net which stands for network, and .org for organization.  The .com has become a symbolic term to define the Internet.

History of .Com

Before it became the primary web address extension in the Internet, the U.S Department of Defense wholly administered this domain naming system for military interest.  As it became apparent in the early 90's that the Internet was a utility for the mass public and for non-defense interest, the Department of Defense transferred the responsibility of maintenance to the National Science Foundation in 1993.  This also allowed people to register their own domain names for their websites.  The .com web address extension quickly became the primary address of the Internet. 

Although .com was designated for commercial use, there are no restrictions in using this web address extension.  It became the lingo for the Internet, as websites and email servers use this address that created the dot-com boom and the eventual dot-com bubble from 1997-2001.

A key factor to the popularity of .com is the fact that commercial companies advertise their websites with this web address extension.  For example, if a multinational company XYZ buys the domain name www.XYZ.com and puts the address in their advertising campaigns, it is natural for the public to remember the .com web address extension, although there are other top level domains around.  The rapid expansion of .com from 1997-2001 spurred by Internet startups and traditional companies has made it a part of the common language of people when they describe the Internet.

Picking The Right Web Address Extension for SEO

Web address extensions also play a role in optimizing your website for search engines.  SEO friendly domains are a good start in keeping up with the competition in search engine rankings.  Since registering a domain name is one of the first things to do when creating a website, it is critical to pick a domain name that catches the attention of your potential readers and search engine bots.
Among the first questions that may come to you when picking a domain name is - what web address extension will you use?  Top level domains are one-third of your domain, with one-third being the "www,” and the other third being the name between the www and .com.  Although there is a lot of discussion and debate among SEO professionals on the importance of web address extensions, most of them agree that .com is still the best extension for SEO purposes. 

Here are some of the reasons why .com is a better choice for webmasters:

Geo-specific Targeting

The extension .com is already popular in the general scale.  However, if you want to attract visitors in a specific local market, the .com top level domain followed by a second level country code extension is very important.  Examples of these are co.uk for United Kingdom, .co.in for India, and .co.au for Australia.  If a website is hosted with this form of web address extension, it sends a strong indicator to search engines that you are targeting a specific country.

The combination of .com plus the country code will vastly improve your chances of being ranked by search engines.

Level Of Usage And System Bias

Even with the influx of new top level domains such as .info, .biz.,  and .us, the .com extension is still the most widely used, and other web address extensions may be too novel for casual users.  Experienced webmasters and their business clients prefer .com domains because it is the most natural form of web extension.  More people relate .com to good and useful sites compared to other forms of web address extensions.

This also leads to a systemic bias in search results.  Although search engines like Google do not place special weight to top level domain extensions, search engines results are very organic and highly dependent on the surfing habits of people.  Since people accept .com domains as a natural address and are more receptive to sites with a .com domain, Google picks up on that and puts .com sites on top of search engine rankings. 

Finally, if you want your website to be typed in the address bar, a .com web address extension is a great choice.  This address will get more direct traffic from users’ address bars since people are more used to typing .com.

URL Canonicalization

One facet of SEO that website administrators overlook is URL canonicalization.  Canonicalization is an optimization issue that deals with duplicate content, much like when articles are copied from other sources.  As we all know, Google penalizes websites that provide the same content. 

Websites can be accessed from the address bar by typing out a domain name with or without the prefix "www.”  Human users know that they can reach website XYZ by typing www.xyz.com or xyz.com.  However, Google bots see the two addresses differently and treat them as two duplicate websites.  If that happens, Google will think that your website is a copy and drop your website from its rankings.  Thus, what we need is a way to standardize our URLs so Google does not make the mistake of seeing two different websites.

With so many .com websites registered, it is unlikely that you will get your first choice, but as long as you pick the right keywords and use them in your domain name, you can get a good chunk of potential visitors with .com over any other top level domains.