When something looks too good to be true, it usually is. People who remember this motto tend to avoid many headaches in life.
Around one year ago many readers started to email me asking what I thought about .co.cc domain names, as they were being offered for free by the company who controls their registrations. My reply was that using such domains as test websites was OK, but that I would think twice before developing a serious site there.
Well, it looks like it was sound advice, as yesterday Google confirmed it is removing all the .co.cc domains and websites from its index (i.e., they will not show anymore on any search query, so those domains will not receive any more traffic from Google). The reason is that the majority of the sites using that extension are spammy.
If you are wondering, .co.cc is not a recognized top level domain (as .com or .co.uk are). Instead it’s the domain name of a private company located in Korea, and that is why Google considered it a free hosting provider and blocked it completely.
I don’t think the story would be different if this was a top-level domain though. Say a certain country starts giving away domains with its extension, and spammers start using that offer to create thousands of spam websites. The result would probably be the same.
Also, you don’t need to go far to find similar scenarios. Just think about .biz and .info domains. It’s usually quite easy to find a good domain with those extensions, but it is worth the risk of having your site mixed with spammy ones?
The bottom line being: always go with a .com, .net or .org (.com preferably!).
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