.com or .in website?

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Cloud-S

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My website will be targeted at Indian traffic, so I think I should go for .in but my friends say to go for .com instead as it looks more "professional".

What do you guys say?
 
Well, .com certainly has a more universal feel to it, and is synonymous to internet, so even people with the smallest of idea about the Internet would be able to connect to it.

.in , on the other hand, has its own ups and downs. Even though limited to Indian Traffic, .in can work against you because no matter what you may say, people still have this mindset of an Indian website not being possibly as good as an international one. However, if your site does something which is very relevant to the Indian Culture or India as a whole, like tourism or something, then having .in makes sense.

My personal opinion is go for a .com if its available.
 
.in is cheap the first year only, then it is almost twice the cost of .com domain names..

personally I don't think .in names are better or worse thatn .com names, each has its own acceptability.
 
I say go for '.in' '.com' definitely has a more global tag attached to it, but in our vast and expanding country I feel .in would be the more better choice.
 
I would suggest going for .com to reach the masses because although people are literate enough to understand the differences between the domains, there are majority that dont. If a user with not very sound knowledge tried to find a website, the first thing he would do is put a .com after the same and not .in
Also in casual language we many a times talk as follows

"Arre yaar yahoo homepage pe news hai, dekh lena"
"Iblive pe headlines dekh" (this website self directs us to ibnlive.in.com )
"Bindassbargain pe ek fundoo deal aayi hai"

In all such scenarios we may not always feel the need to say yahoo.com, ibnlive.com etc etc and hence it is always taken for granted that it is .com and hence my opinion says .com is the way to go.
 
hi,

go for a ".com" domain name as it is the most commonly used. if you want ".in", go for ".in" as a domain pointer, and point it to your domain name. this way you would have a ".com" primary domain and a ".in" domain pointer.
 
Those who visit a site directly, know which extension to use. Others who come through a search engine do not care what extention you have. You can even have a .info and they won't mind. If they find the information relevant, they will make the effort to remember the domain name complete with the extension. Otherwise they will just google for it and find it.

If you want to position it to the mindspace of the Indian crowd then go with .IN

It will also depend slightly on the topic of your website though. Broadbandforum is doing well with a .in extension both in search engine and otherwise.

--- Updated Post - Automerged ---
amarkoli said:
hi,

go for a ".com" domain name as it is the most commonly used. if you want ".in", go for ".in" as a domain pointer, and point it to your domain name. this way you would have a ".com" primary domain and a ".in" domain pointer.
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In fact since he wants to target it to the Indian crowd, I would suggest the exact opposite. Use the .com as a pointer. That way it also eliminates any concerns about people not remembering the .in as the .com will always lead to the primary .in domain.
 
My suggestion would be to get both domains & redirect the traffic from one to other.. that way you'll gather traffic from both the domain..
 
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