No matter where you look, big companies tend to favor .com.
The other day I read an article about domains used by corporate users around the world. It just shows how important .com is as a global extension.
Yakup Hasan Küçük at Dofo recently analyzed the top 1,000 companies in the Crunchbase database. These companies come from the U.S., India, U.K., and many other countries. Küçük published his findings in the article “Domain Names of Crunchbase Top 1000 Companies“. This is what he found.
“When we look at their domain extension preferences, .com is the most preferred with 85% (850). The popular extension among startups, .io, follows .com with 31 domain names. .co is the third most popular with 19 domain names.”
This reminds me of my study of the top 100 internet companies in China in the last two years (2018 and 2019).
Note that Küçük’s study consists of companies in various fields but mine is about internet companies only. Even though direct comparison is not possible, I think these studies are still valuable in showing us the importance of .com.
| Study | Share of .com |
|---|---|
| Crunchbase Top 1000 | 85% |
| China Top 100 (internet) 2018 | 86% |
| China Top 100 (internet) 2019 | 84% |
As you can see, most top companies own .com domains and there is strong demand for them in China as well. If you own a .com domain, it may be perfect as an upgrade for a company in China. Therefore, end user research is very helpful. Some simple steps may go a long way. Read “Three steps to Chinese end user research” for details.
Source: (https://domainnamewire.com/)
