Have you heard that Canadians discovered the Internet?
Actually, that's about as far from accurate as a statement can be. In fact, Canadians are more web savvy than Americans per capita.
A big milestone was reached for our neighbors to the North regarding the use of .ca domains. On April 13th, the 1 millionth .ca domain was registered. The first was registered in 1988 (see, they've been on the web for a LONG time).
I get to work with a rather prominent .ca domain on a regular basis that should certainly be a .ca: Century21.ca. This is a Canadian business that clearly does business primarily in Canada. A perfect case for a .ca domain.
However, Toronto-based search engine marketer, Andrew Goodman, who thinks .ca domains may not be appropriate for Canadians in all situations since they may seem "provincial" on the world wide web:
When Registering Domains, Think Big
It reinforces the tendency of Canadian businesses to think "provincially." Much of the time, you are in a global and definitely a North American market, even if you didn't realize it yet.
It's true that in some markets, a .com is a liability. Using a .com in France, research shows, will lower clickthrough rates on paid search ads, and no doubt conversion rates to sales.
However, Canada is not France.
Here's my take: If your business is Canada based and does business in Canada, a .ca domain seems to make a lot of sense. If you do business internationally, a .com may make people outside of Canada more comfortable. More importantly, if you decide to use a .ca for your business and would be pissed if someone registered the .com version of your business' name, you have all the justification you need to at least own both.
1. Posted by: Andrew Goodman on April 17, 2008 7:32 PM:
Ed, the real reason I wrote this definitely doesn't apply to Century 21. Century 21, after all, definitely has a .com as well.
The real snag is when you start up a company and settle on a domain, then realize that it's going to be North America wide or global. A .ca is not going to cut it. So you change the name. And you take the 6-12 month hit that comes with rebranding, getting the .com you need, waiting for the search results to come back up to where they were. (301 strategy or not, you'll still have problems...)
6-12 months of weakened traffic is a lifetime of pain for many businesses. Best to plan ahead. The same would go for having a solid nomenclature system that could anticipate a global rollout. Information architecture is rarely studied enough in the launch of a site, and sure, that doesn't apply to a small local site, but it applies to anything that expects to reach people widely.