The .net or .biz Problem: When Customers Type .com Instead
If your domain ends in .net or .biz, some of your customers are landing on someone else's .com by mistake. Here's how much that costs you—and what to do about it.
You bought a .net because the .com was taken. Or maybe someone told you .biz was fine. It works. You can type it into a browser and your site comes up. So what's the problem?
The problem is that your customers don't type the way you do. When someone hears your business name and goes to find you, most of them add .com without thinking. It's a habit. And if you're on .net or .biz, that habit sends them somewhere else.
Why people default to .com
For most of the country, ".com" is the ending. People have typed it ten thousand times. They don't stop to remember which extension you use—they just reach for the one they know.
Watch someone who isn't in the tech world look up a business. They hear the name, they type it, they add .com out of muscle memory. Many don't even know other endings exist. If you tell them "it's dot net," they'll nod and then forget by the time they get to their phone.
That's the whole issue with customers typing .com instead of your domain extension. It isn't that they don't want to find you. It's that they're on autopilot, and autopilot goes to .com.
Where those customers actually land
When someone types the .com version of your name, one of three things happens—and none of them are good for you.
- They hit a competitor. If another business grabbed the .com, your customer is now looking at their site. You did the marketing. Someone else got the visit.
- They hit a parked page. The .com might show ads or a "this domain is for sale" notice. Your customer sees that and assumes you went out of business.
- They hit nothing. A dead page or an error. The customer figures they got the name wrong and gives up—or worse, searches again and clicks the first result, which might not be you.
In every case, you paid to get that person interested, and the .com problem cost you the visit at the last step.
This mostly hurts word-of-mouth
Here's the part that stings. The customers most likely to type the wrong ending are the ones who heard about you from a friend.
Somebody says, "Call ABC Plumbing, they're great." The friend goes home, types "abcplumbing.com," and lands on the wrong site. Your best kind of lead—a referral—never reaches you. And you'll never know it happened, because there's nothing to measure. The visit just doesn't show up.
Same thing with a truck wrap, a business card, or a radio ad. Anytime someone has to remember your name and type it later, .net and .biz leak customers. If your business runs on people saying your name out loud, this matters more than almost anything else about your website.
How to tell if it's costing you
You can check this in about a minute. Type your name with .com in the address bar and see what comes up.
- Does a competitor's site load? That's a direct leak.
- Does a for-sale or parked page load? Customers think you're closed.
- Does nothing load? Some customers give up right there.
If any of those happen, some share of your referrals and repeat customers are ending up in the wrong place. You won't see the exact number, but you can be sure it isn't zero.
What you can do about it
You've got a few options, from cheap patches to a real fix.
Buy the .com if it's available
If the .com version of your exact name is open, getting it is the cleanest answer. You point it at your existing site, and now both endings work. The people typing .com land on you.
Get on a strong .com name and move
Sometimes the exact .com is gone, but a better name is out there—one that's easy to say and easy to spell. Moving your site to it is more work than adding a redirect, but it fixes the leak for good and often reads better on a sign or a card. If you've been wondering whether a name change is overdue for other reasons too, read When Your Business Outgrows Its Name.
Set up a redirect if you buy a second name
If you pick up a .com to protect against the leak, you don't need two websites. You point the new name at your current one with a redirect, and visitors land in the same place no matter which they type. Your registrar's help pages walk you through it—for example, ICANN's basics for domain holders is a good place to understand how domains and forwarding work.
The extension isn't the only signal
A .net or .biz can quietly tell people your first choice was taken. It's a small thing, but customers pick up on small things. If your domain is also hard to spell or hard to say, the problems stack. Two related reads: why customers give up on a hard domain and how a vague domain keeps you off Google.
The fix here is usually simpler than people expect. If your name is on .net or .biz, take one minute today: type the .com version and see who's there. If it's not you, that's the leak.
From there, you can browse names for your city and trade to see what's open, or ask us about one specific .com and we'll tell you what it would take to get it. No pressure—just a straight answer on whether it's worth it for your shop.
