Ok, lets say I just told somebody at a party (what a geeky party) about this cool site called Wikipedia. They go home, and settle down at the PC and type in Wikipedia.com, right? Right. We have come to realise, how ever unconsciously that .com is a generic top-level domain. This testifies the value of using a .com rather than a .org, .info (etc) domain. For more information on this topic, see this website on .com domains.

Obvious other types of domains have their place. For instance, geographical domains play their part at both a functional and conscious level. Here in Australia, if I give out my BigPond email address which ends in .com most people are adamant that I mean .com.au. I am unsure how people react to .us, .co.uk and .ca.

I feel that geographical domains are more significant at an offline level. From what I observe, people that source a domain offline are likely to think of its geographical orientation. Whereas online, standard .com plays a greater role.