Study shows that people remember domain names as having .com on the end.
One of the problems with using a top level domain name other than .com is memorability. While it might stand out to people as new or unique, many people will remember your domain name as a .com.
This is especially the case when people can’t see it, such as hearing a radio commercial for a website. But it’s even a factor when people do see the domain name, and that’s clear in a clever study performed by Kyle Byers of GrowthBadger.
Kyle surveyed 1,500 people and didn’t tell them the study was about domain names. He asked them how trustworthy a site was and the only information he gave them was a domain name. It ended in .com or one of seven other domain name extensions.
Overall, the ones that ended in .com had the highest trustworthiness score.
But the most intriguing thing to me was quantifying recall. After asking about the website, Kyle threw in a bunch of other questions to create some time between reviewing the domain and a final question: what was the domain name they saw on the first screen?
People were more likely to remember the domain if it was a .com. And if they misremembered the domain extension? They almost always misremembered it as .com:
This doesn’t surprise me but quantifies the effect.
Kyle has an interesting takeaway that domain investors will like:
The domain he tested was MattressRankings.TLD. The .com is on the aftermarket for about $4,000; the others can be hand registered. Kyle asks, isn’t it worth paying extra for the aftermarket domain in light of the findings?
thelegendaryjp says
As we witnessed many years ago the .org surpassed .net in the minds of most, .com is king and nothing is new years and years later, will only get stronger.
Kevin Murphy says
I have to wonder how reliable the survey is, given that a bunch of people apparently misremembered the domain as a .biz/.blog/.io
John says
The real shocking reality there is that .us is doing as well as it is even though the American public still scarcely knows it even exists.
I have written before about what happened to me in a Staples store. Needed some help getting a phone on display to work and surf the web. Also wanted to look at my own new TLD site (then, no more). It was very telling when the guy helping me had a major “cognitive dissonance” problem and the first puzzled words out of his mouth were “what, no .com or anything?”
I have also written before about I discovered as an end user when traffic stats showed you the google and other search strings. People actually search for the .com domain, even if it’s longer than the movie “Barry Lyndon” if the phrase is top of mind. Not just the domain, but “.com” in addition to the SLD including use of spaces.
But what do I know, I’m just an anonymous troll.
Great and useful post this time. The real new takeaway there is about .us. 😉
Mark Thorpe says
Using a domain extension for your business or personal website other than .COM is a losing battle.
You lose website traffic, misplaced emails etc. Why do that to yourself?
.COM is the default domain extension of the Internet.
Using any other domain extension is going against the grain. Simple as that.
Gene says
That all sounds great, and very few would disagree, generally; but tell that to a new startup which has “Delta” in their name, or any other generic dictionary word. If the DICTIONARYWORD.com is long gone, what’s your suggestion? I’ve posed this question about a hundred times on various ‘go-dot-com’ articles, and not one person has ever given a practical answer.
Considering that there are only about 200,000 entries in the Oxford English dictionary, but there are almost 2,000,000,000 websites, it’s a safe bet that all the words are being (or will be) used in domain names.
And while you can give all the kudos you want to those who had the foresight…or funds…to scoop up the dictionary words (dot-com), that doesn’t address the problem that not everyone can have a choice dot-com.
So what’s the answer for the other 1.9+ billion sites? Shut down your business? File a UDRP against the owner of the name you’d like to have? Maybe blackmail the domain holder?
…or should everyone else just pick another extension and focus on building their business – knowing that (i) they may not see as much traffic with another TLD, (ii) they may lose emails, and (iii) there might be retention issues.
What should everyone (else) do?
Snoopy says
Use a two or three word domain like every other business does.
Hilarious that you think nobody has ever given you a practical answer to that question. I guess you prefer to think the “practical solution” is new tlds?
Michael Anthony Castello says
This is old news. We need to start thinking about voice recognition and artificial intelligence. As an example- take your smart phone, if it’s Apple, say “hey Siri, go to Nashville.com”. Siri will take you to the website. Then again ask “hey Siri, go to Nashville.info”. Siri interprets this as Nashville dot info. These extensions fail the AI test.
Try that with all the other extensions. See what the future holds for them.
H says
Visiting sites with voice commands is never going to become mainstream. At least I hope so.
Eric Borgos says
Great study!
sprbman says
The future depend on us. AI is made by us too. If we like to complain that all is limited to “.com”, than we all end up in the “.com” box. Think and act out of the box and the future will break the old box 😉
With this kind of articles you can be easily placed in the “.com” interested marketers who’s trying to manipulate and delay the new TLDs boom.
I understand that are many people relying on selling “.com” and the new TLDs are a threat to their market, but the reality is that new TLD is like Bitcoin to money 🙂
Snoopy says
How many new tlds have you bought to reach that level of denial?
sprbman says
I’m not saying that now, in this moment, the TLDs are the best option, especially because are people like you that are still stuck in the “.com” bubble. The investments in “.com” are bigger and older than newTLDs ones, so it’s clear that the market is still in the old box.
The forced denial of the future success of newTLDs is obvious when some people are not selling old crappy “.com” names when the buyers have so many catchy options, easy to remember and specialized like”.shop” or “.expert” etc.
How many “.com” have you bought to reach that level of denial?
Henry says
I don’t need a survey to know that that buying a domain name in these new tlds was throwing money down the drain. This rememberability factor happened to me on my own domain names as I was developing them. I found myself typing .com instead of the new extension that I bought the name under. It was a rude awakening. Needless to say that I eventually deleted some of the names and let them all expire except one because it is a 3 letter name.
That was an expensive mistake or what my wife called an “idle experiment” that didn’t have to happen given the amount of money I spent on them. There are few gems in the new tlds but most of them are reserved with high price already on them including the expensive renewals. I’m out!
Patrick says
Big vote today at the UN, that could spell the end of the dot IO country code.
Ryan Duke says
Interesting article. My first website was a .ws. I finally secured the .com for the same domain some years later. There is definitely something tied to .com in the minds of internet users.
Snoopy says
In what way is .us doing well? You could add in a non existent tld and it would probably poll as well as .us, .biz, .io etc.
John says
That’s right, keep dogging me and lying like you just did at Elliot’s. Thanks for all the love Snoop.
Aaron Garcia says
Thanks for conducting this study. I had contemplated purchasing the new gTLDs like .tech .blog .global .xyz but these will likely not be as memorable as a .com and will not rank the same in search results either.