Most think .com most important domain for online business

Over 56% of people say .com is the most important domain name for an online business

The modern internet was born with the .com domain name and a new poll reveals that the majority of people still believe the .com to be the essential domain for doing business online.

Back in March 1985, the first commercial internet domain name registered was symbolics.com, to computer firm Symbolics Inc of Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Today, despite competition from 100s of alternatives – soon to be 1,000s  – .com is still seen by many as the world’s premier online identifier with over 100 million .com domain names now registered globally.

In a poll conducted earlier this month among 123-reg customers, 56.2% of respondents said they thought .com to be the most important domain name for an online business. That’s a valuable insight for anybody looking to build a successful brand with the internet so fundamental to business success nowadays.

Amazingly, investment in that success can still be bought from just £10.99 per year with 123-reg. That could be some investment too. The 29 most expensive re-sold domain names on record were all .com domains, including insure.com that changed ownership for US$16million (over £10million) in 2009, not your average return from that sort of investment.

A .com domain name certainly appears to be synonymous with success. According to Verisign – the Registry of the .com domain – 97% of the top 100 brands have a registered .com domain name and 93% of the Fortune Global 100 use a .com.

Further revealed by the poll of 516 randomly selected 123-reg customers is the fact that a further 41.3% believe that a .co.uk is the most important domain name for an online business. That probably reflects the strength of 123-reg’s UK customer base and the importance of domain names in SEO. It also shows that for less than the cost of an average branded print cartridge you can secure domain names that over 97% of people see essential for online businesses.

Have  you got your .com domain? If your first choice wasn’t available what was your solution?