.in Go with .com or .IN, if the website is country specific (India)?

[Ten10]

As a followup to my previous post singular OR plural EMD ... but for another project.

If the audience of a website is just country specific, is it better to use .com or the .ccTLD, in this case .IN?

The website content will only be in English.

Please assume .com is also available and .com would redirect to .IN but .IN would be canonical.

The client would like to use .IN as it clearly indicates to the audience the company is based in India, without referring to about us page

but there is a concern about competitor's .com website ranking higher in search results, just due to being a .com, assuming all other factors are same?

Should I recommend the client to go with a .IN domain instead of .com OR to stick to .com?

Any disadvantages to using .IN over .com, when website is country specific?

I would not ask the client to try .IN then switch to .com, as it would mean additional marketing cost later.

Are search engines still not considering ccTLDs on par with .com for country specific websites?

 

[Doron Vermaat]

If you target India I personally would go for the .In domain to develop on because of SEO benefits. If the .com is available or not too expensive i would get that as well and forward it to the .in. IMO.

 

[geek80]

A .com is better any day even in the future if u want to go global. I will also register the .in to be on the safer side.

 

[Kokoro]

Develop .in and register .com as a backup if that extra $10/year is not a problem for your client. This will secure future expansion and prevent the traffic leak.

.IN domains are growing fast, approx. 1.5% per month. I guess it will become primary choice for domestic market just like .de or .nl

 

[aceeca]

Develop .in and register .com as a backup if that extra $10/year is not a problem for your client. This will secure future expansion and prevent the traffic leak.

.IN domains are growing fast, approx. 1.5% per month. I guess it will become primary choice for domestic market just like .de or .nl

If you target India I personally would go for the .In domain to develop on because of SEO benefits. If the .com is available or not too expensive i would get that as well and forward it to the .in. IMO.

At the start, if the target audience is in India, I would think that .in would be better suited in terms on SEO. And there is no penalty is having .com redirect to .in

If in the future, if the audience is from out of India, definitely .com would be better suited, which given the tools Google provides, is trivial to switch the indexed pages in Google from .in to .com

 

[Josh R]

Get the .com no matter what....

 

[smp860]

I would use .in but also have .com for brand protection and re-direct it to the .in version.