Dot XYZ Domain Extension Trustworthiness.

Domain extension .xyz

I see so many domain extensions available and am bemused on how many people buy them and then try to broker them.

From my own experience unless you have a top-level domain name like .com, .net .co.uk .org .info or a country-code domain extension you run the risk of confusing your viewers who may question the legitimacy of your website if you have not acquired a TLD.

As an example, if a website was named www.ukdomainbrokers.xyz (this a domain name for example purposes only and does not exist I do not think) as opposed to www.ukdomainbrokers.com which I own, which one would you choose to click on?

A top-level domain name is determined by DNS hierarchy which represents the first stop after the root zone. In simpler terms, a TLD is everything that follows the final dot of a domain name.

Now I am based in the UK and I have tested the dot com over the .co.uk and the dot com wins hands down. It ranks faster but then again all search engines are USA-based, have USA algorithms and focus on the dot com as the king of all domain extensions.

I would never consider a domain extension such as (.XYZ) as it looks tacky for starters and may encourage spammers and hackers to clone legitimate sites. In fact, some browsers are disallowing this domain extension.

Google SEO Guidelines

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/beginner/seo-starter-guide
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/guidelines/get-started

According to Google, it is the content on the website that will help rank your domain rather than the domain extension. However to have targeted GEO Fencing having a lesser-known domain extension will generate unwanted traffic and will actually damage your website’s credibility.

As an example, you can set your desired traffic through Google Search Console formerly known as Google Webmaster but even though I am located in the UK I may on occasion use dot coms. What I find even when setting my traffic to the UK only, I still get a lot of traffic from the USA.

Just because it is cheap to register a lesser-known domain extension does not mean you should. You will find registrars often have special TLDs promotions to entice new customers, hence I would stick with TLDs if you want to help your prospective buyer to get the most out of the domain name.

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