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I want to create a personal webpage for info about myself (potentially for employment or other contact purposes), but the .com extension for my intended name is already taken. The name I want ends in the letters 'in', to which I have noticed I could shorten the name and use the .in domain extension, which is not taken.

Would this be a bad idea? I am not Indian, or have any affiliation to the country, but using this would match my other means of contact perfectly (an example would be if my email were puffin@example.com, and I made my domain name puff.in).

Ari
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3 Answers3

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Generally considered bad for SEO due to Geotargeting, Google search about ccTLD since .in is not a generic domain, additionally you should find this information useful:

A warning to ccTLDS:

Domain hacks is a popular reason for choosing ccTLDs, combining the domain name with certain ccTLDs to spell out the full name of the website, i.e. goo.gl, fold.it, youtu.be. The obvious choices are .AL, .AS, .CO, .IN, .IS, .IT, .ME, .US, but remember; Google only considers three of these as generic, .ME, .CO, and .AS. Generic TLDs have the Geo Targeting feature enabled in Google Webmaster so a site is able to target a specific country, i.e. a .DE website cannot target France.

This isn't to say you can't but for easier SEO its best to avoid.

Zistoloen
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Simon Hayter
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Putting aside the SEO issue (which has been well-covered by bybe), some country-specific top-level domains require that the registered domain be for a native of, or resident in, the given country. On a parallel for businesses or organizations, such domains must be for orgs located in the given country or be targeting the given country.

Grant Palin
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It would be a better choice to make difference from all CommonName, so the question is: what is significally different in your message.

Or use some personnal interest: Dr-CommonName, MyTown-CommonName (if you aim to live to your dead int it :)), CommonName-nn (your year day), or with pass-time, activity...

Zistoloen
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cl-r
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