You may or may not be aware that the .co top level domain (TLD) is now available for trademark owners to purchase and will become generally available to everybody from the 20^th July 2010.

What is it and is it worth buying one of these domains? The .co TLD was originally the domain name for Colombia and was originally administered by the University of the Andes in Bogota. The TLD was only allocated to organisations with Trademarks that matched at the third level (e.g. domain.com.co). This resulted in approximately 28 000 domains being registered. The Colombian government became involved and looked for ways to open up the domain to a wider audience.

As a result the domain has been opened up to organisations outside of Colombia, in just the same way that Tuvalu allowed outside organisations to buy .tv domains. The .co domain is supposed to be aimed at companies, corporations, commerce, communities and any other grouping that begins with “co”. Maybe they have missed a trick, instead of aiming it at companies maybe they should have aimed it at couples? With the number of break-ups that take place and then people getting together with new partners there would always be a demand. They could even have had a buyout scheme so when Darren and Tracy split up the domain darrenandtracy.co could be released for another couple to buy. I’ve missed my way in life!

The release has been phased, the first phase was to allow those Colombian companies the opportunity to protect their domain. The second phase, which is currently underway, will allow international trademark owners the opportunity to register the relevant .co domain. This will continue until 10^th June 2010. In the event of two companies requesting the same domain then an auction will take place to determine who gains control of the domain. From 21^st June 2010 to 13^th July 2010 anybody will have the opportunity to request an unregistered .co domain. Again in the event of two or more people requesting the same domain there will be an auction. From 20^th July 2010 anybody will be able to register the domain.

Now there is a lot of hype on the internet that this TLD will be the “next big thing” and that it is vitally important for organisations to protect their brand identity by ensuring that they register the relevant .co domain. However, think carefully before being swept along with the hype, remember the people that are telling you most vociferously that you need to have one of these domains are the very people that are trying to sell you it.

Let’s take a moment to think about the potential advantages of the .co domain:

• Protects brand identity
• It involves less typing than either a .com or co.uk domain

Let’s look at the potential disadvantages of the .co domain

• When was the last time you tried to access a site other than your generic TLD (e.g. co.uk) or .com? Do you ever look for domain.biz for example? Howabout domain.mobi? domain.name? Probably not, so although the .co domain may be useful to complete your clean sweep of domains it may not be that useful to your organisation.
• “Yes, but what if somebody else registers it and gets a higher ranking on Google than we have?” you ask. There is always the chance of that happening but then they could register any domain and still get higher rankings than yourself. The reason I would not worry too much about this domain is that when you search with Google the way that it knows whether a site is a local site (i.e. from the same country as you) is through the TLD, so a .co.uk will generally rank more highly than a .com domain, all things being equal. The same will be true of the .co domain.

 It will no doubt be an interesting few weeks as people scramble to obtain their chosen .co domain. The final phase is being described as a “land rush”. In my opinion it is more of a gold rush, some people will make a lot of money out of this but the majority will not.

So will you be purchasing a .co domain? Let me know, one way or the other…