I got asked today whether it was better to have a .co.uk or .com domain name for a new site, and it’s an interesting question to try to answer.
I suppose really it depends on a few different things; what your website is for, who your main clientele is, whether or not you intend to sell physical products.
It all might seem a bit trivial, but there’s an argument to be made for familiarity of your customers to the domain name that you choose.Viral video by ebuzzing
Think about it, as a UK consumer you’re probably subconsciously happier purchasing something from a website with a .uk suffix than you are from a .com or any other site. It’s a bizarre trait seeing as any website can be hosted anywhere in the world, but must Brits will trust a “UK” website more than a foreign one.
That being said, if your website targets a global audience and focuses more on the number of views that you get rather than actually trying to sell a physical product, then a .com domain name is much more valuable. There are over 300 million Americans out there compared to around 60 million Brits, which means that a .com domain is, in theory at least, trusted by five times as many people as a .co.uk domain.
So, in the end, it really depends on the type of site that you run. But, don’t get too hung up on the domain, there are literally millions of websites out there that fail to register almost any views because they lack any kind of decent content. Focus on the content, and you stand a much better chance of success.