Domain biased?

[Marks]

Hey, I was wondering how significant you think the .com / .co.uk part of the domain is, and how much affect it has on new users visiting the site?

Are you more likely to join a .com forum than a .co.uk, if for example, you are american?

I'm asking because a while back we were forced to move hosts, and in part of this process we moved from .com to .co.uk (the rest of the domain stayed the same). The reason for this was because we didn't want to have to wait for the domain to transfer, and we were a relatively new site anyway so we weren't too worried about losing the page ranking etc. The .com has been redirecting to the .co.uk ever since.

Since then we have built up a lot more backlinks, and SEO ranking than we had before. We are far from at our desired position, but we are getting there.

I've been considering paying to get the .com transferred over, as I do worry that we could be losing non british members because of the .co.uk domain. However if we were to do this, we would be losing our google ranking for the .co.uk, and would involve a fair bit of work to get the forum up and running on the new domain also.

What do you think? I've added a poll.

[JacquiiDesigns]

I always find the .co.whatever domains simply harder to remember than .com, .org, .info, .net -- If theres a choice between a .com or a .co.uk domain - I'd choose the .com any and every day of the week. I don't think either domain has any bearing on SEO or pagerank though if the webmaster/webmistress has put SEO strategies into place.

I voted I only really like mainstream domains, not country specific, but it wont put me off using a site. -- though it country-specific domains are a bit of a put off simply because I cannot remember them LOL

Jacquii.

[Marks]

I'm really undecided on this. Personally I don't generally come across many websites that are using domains that are not mainstream, or of my own country, so I am not sure how it would affect me using that site. I'm just worried there is a significant difference, and I might be losing out if I keep the .co.uk.

[deadlySniper]

Well people mostly go to a site with a .com domain, rather than .co.uk.
As people think your just a noob if you have a .co.uk cause you can get them for free.

But if it's all about the UK... Then .co.uk is best.

[Wayne Luke]

Don't really look at the domain name. I follow links. If the site is interesting, I bookmark it and that bookmark goes to all browsers and computers that I use through xMarks.