Well, it looks like the first camp was right, as the .com extension is becoming more and more popular lately. In fact today Google announced that it bought the g.co domain name, and it plan to make an official Google URL shortener out of it. Other tech giants had already done similar moves. Twitter, for instance, owns t.co, and Amazon owns a.co.

An interesting point about Google purchasing and using a .co domain is that it actually gives a lot of credibility to that extension. A big problem with extensions like .biz and .info is that fact that mostly spam websites use them, but if Google itself is using a .co domain then other websites doing the same will probably be treated with respect from big G, right?

I haven’t purchased any .co domains, and I don’t plan to do so now, but at this point I must admit that if you manage to find a good .co domain still available it might be worth the investment.

You could also bet on the rise of popularity of such domains and purchase existing .co domains (say for $100, $1000 or $5000) with the plan of flipping them a year or two down the road (this is a high risk strategy, though, so think twice before doing it).

Finally, if you plan to build an authority website, I would still recommend going with a .com.

Around one year ago many readers started to email me asking what I thought about .co.cc domain names, as they were being offered for free by the company who controls their registrations. My reply was that using such domains as test websites was OK, but that I would think twice before developing a serious site there.

Well, it looks like it was sound advice, as yesterday Google confirmed it is removing all the .co.cc domains and websites from its index (i.e., they will not show anymore on any search query, so those domains will not receive any more traffic from Google). The reason is that the majority of the sites using that extension are spammy.

If you are wondering, .co.cc is not a recognized top level domain (as .com or .co.uk are). Instead it’s the domain name of a private company located in Korea, and that is why Google considered it a free hosting provider and blocked it completely.

I don’t think the story would be different if this was a top-level domain though. Say a certain country starts giving away domains with its extension, and spammers start using that offer to create thousands of spam websites. The result would probably be the same.

Also, you don’t need to go far to find similar scenarios. Just think about .biz and .info domains. It’s usually quite easy to find a good domain with those extensions, but it is worth the risk of having your site mixed with spammy ones?

The bottom line being: always go with a .com, .net or .org (.com preferably!).

There is one that might be the exception though, and it’s the .tv one.

I am not sure yet if those domains will become valuable or not, but they might. That is because I am starting to see a trend of major websites and publishers securing .tv domains to launch their online video shows. Examples include Twit.tv, TechCrunch.tv and FordModels.tv.

The other side of the trend is the popularization of Internet based television platforms, like Google TV and Apple TV. Those platforms are trying to bring online video to the living room of the average household, blurring the line between mainstream and Internet based television shows and videos.

The result could be an adoption of the .tv domain as the standard for websites that are compatible with Internet television (i.e., websites that have video content available and that are compatible with the Internet television platforms). This means whenever consumers were “browsing” on their televisions they would first try the .tv version of the domain they are looking for.

This is just a possible scenario though, and it’s way too soon to forecast what will happen (read “Don’t go out on a .tv buying spree and blame it on me later if the domains become worthless!).

That being said it could be a good idea to secure at least one .tv domain that you think would be suitable for you to create a video show on. If you like nutrition, for example, you could try to buy NutritionChannel.tv (which is available by the way). Then if the trend described above becomes true and online video explodes you could use that domain for a new project.

Thoughts?

The most used strategy to do this is to get access to the email account of the victim, to set an email forwarder that will redirect the victim’s emails to the malicious user, and then to transfer the domain to a new account (the person will be able to do this because he has access to the authorization codes that are sent via email).

There are also other techniques around, but they are more sophisticated. The bottom line is that keeping a close look on your domains is always a good idea.

If you want some help with that you can use the Domain Monitor Service from DomainTools.com. The service is completely free, although you’ll need to register a user account first.

Once you have an account you can add as many domains as you want, and the tool will track and alert you about changes of:

• Domain status (e.g., if the registration lock is removed from your domain)
• Domain name servers (e.g., if your domain starts pointing to a new server)
• Registrar change (e.g., if a registrar starts a transfer process on your domain)
• Expiration dates (e.g., if your domain expires or gets renewed)

It’s a pretty useful service, and once you set it up you can forget about it. Check it out.

It looks like I am outdated, though, as recently I came across an article titled 10 Websites to Discover Hot Domains You Wouldn’t Have Thought About, and I only knew 4 out of the 10 tools they mentioned.

Here is a quote:

Let’s start by brainstorming on paper. But if your brain is not shifting gears, there are a host of domain name search websites that can help to crank it up. I am not suggesting that you rely on them, but domain name generators take your keywords and can come up with unique word combinations that you wouldn’t have thought about. A lot of them also allow you to lookup the names with the Domain Registrars to see if they are available.

If you are always researching and buying domains, the article is worth a read and a bookmark.