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Let's say I have a choice between best-something.com and bestsomething.info, and my website will contain articles how to choose best "something" and reviews of various "something".

I read a lot about this, but still cannot decide.

best-something.com looks acceptable, but it can be confused with completely different website bestsomething.com, and this is bad.

bestsomething.info I think is easier to remember, and I like it more, but I read that Google have (had?) some problems with .info domains: http://www.seobook.com/google-temporarily-purges-info-domain-names - for example some people write:

"I don't think .info names are ignored by Google, just trusted less than .com, .net, .org, and ccTLDs like .de or .co.uk"

"I think the domain name extension does have effect as one of my site aupp.info is not yet indexed on google while being submitted 6 weeks back."

To keep answers on topic, please do not suggest something like "add one more word and buy .com", "choose other name and buy .com", etc. I already tried that, and couldn't find good alternatives. I also considered other non .com domain names besides .info, but they just either look bad in my case, or hard to remember, or both. So at this point I need to make a choice between best-something.com and bestsomething.info.

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5 Answers

up vote 4 down vote accepted

The scarcity of commercial sites using dashes or .info implies you should avoid both at all costs.

Below is a conversation between the founders of RapGenius, a rap lyrics site, and Harj Taggear of Y Combinator, the prestigious seed fund, as quoted in The Launch Pad by Randall Stross. They're discussing domain names for a proposed Rock Genius (and rockgenius.com is taken):

Moghadam revisits RockGenius.net. "Do you think .net--?"

"Don't do .net," says Taggar.

"What's so bad about .net, though? It's got sort of an indie feel to it, I thought, since indie rock will probably be central to Rock Genius."

That kind of thing is exactly the thing not to overthink," says Taggar. "People understand .com."

I'd get creative and figure out a way to avoid using a dash or a .info in your domain name because the average internet user expects somename.com. thesomename.com or somenameapp.com can work as a placeholder while your site gains traction. Remember that Facebook launched as thefacebook.com.

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Thank you all for all the answers! All 4 answers helped me to make the decision. I tried even more possible words, and managed to find acceptable .com domain name (made of two words and without hyphen). – Lissanro Rahyen Dec 7 '12 at 12:51
Remember you can always have the dash and .info names aswell pointing to your new site – mgb Jan 14 at 0:16
up vote 2 down vote

You're putting a lot of constraints on there but I feel like people instinctively just put .com so that may be your best option. I feel like there are very few major websites that don't have .com (though the same could be said for a hyphen). But in my opinion a hyphen is less of a difficulty than a .info but that is really just opinion.

In addition it may be a decent idea to buy a few of the common misspellings of the domain and have them redirect to your site.

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up vote 2 down vote

.com is still better since people are assuming you are a .com (quite a few times i caught my self doing that).

Dash suck big time! I have a company with dash in the url and o boy that's not good. I'm watching people typing the company name in the address bar and google without dash. Luckily google is one smart tool and he gives correct result, but again. Don't use dash. That's my experience with it.

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up vote 0 down vote

Here is what you or anyone should do in a similar case. Buy both, then redirect the non .com to the .com and use the .com for your website. In almost every case you will want the .com, unless your target market is very knowledgeable about tech.

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If I choose best-something.com, I think common typo will be missing hyphen, and I cannot do anything about it because bestsomething.com is already taken. Since you strongly recommend .com as primary address for website, even if it will contain hyphen, I assume you think that Google still does not "like" .info? This is what the seobook.com article and comments in it are about (but they are 4 years old, so I'm not sure it's still true).Or you mean that common people do not like .info? Even if it feels like a part of the name? – Lissanro Rahyen Dec 7 '12 at 6:44
If you can brand the name with the .info go ahead, but we never know how Google will treat non-.coms in the future. If you choose a .com at least you will be on even footing with most everyone. Have you tried purchasing the bestsomething.com from the owner? Even with the dash the non-technical people would trust the domain name better. Not to mention many have not heard of .info. – dkroy Dec 7 '12 at 20:42
up vote 0 down vote

Neither best-something.com nor bestsomething.info. All looks spammy. Nothing about .com or .info, it's "best something".

You think too much on unnecessary details and get hyped by experts. Save that time for real business.

For domain, I suggest something unique and related to the the topic. Use .com, no hyphen, no exact match. For example, if your topic is Vacuum cleaner， use something like "VacuumCleanerTalk.com", "VacuumClearnerExpert.com" etc.

You mentioned "please do not suggest something like add one more word and buy .com". I would say it's impossible all meaningful prefix and suffix exhausted. If that is really the case, use "JoeTalkVacuumCleaner.com" is still much better than "best-vacuumcleaner.com" and "bestvacuumcleaner.info"

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