.CO Blog

GoDaddy bought two 30-second commercials in yesterday’s Super Bowl at an estimated price of over $2 million each.  The first commercial to air after the end of the first quarter was GoDaddy’s .CO commercial, starring sexy lingerie model Natalia Velez getting her body painted by regular GoDaddy girls Danica Patrick and Jillian Michaels.

The commercial was a smashing success, as GoDaddy reported its highest sales ever for a Super Bowl Sunday, its eighth consecutive year advertising in the big game.  GoDaddy also saw a 10X increase in .CO domain name registrations. 

It’s unlikely that GoDaddy will immediately recoup the millions it spent on this .CO Super Bowl commercial, but hopefully the mass exposure of .CO to over 100 million viewers will strengthen the .CO brand and establish GoDaddy as the go-to place to purchase .CO domains.

One of the key selling points of the .CO domain space is that there are many great category-killer domain names still available at an affordable price.  Compare that to the more popular .COM space, which has nearly 100 million names registered, offering little hope for anyone to secure a short, memorable .COM name without breaking the bank.

This funny video illustrates the challenge for .COM buyers and provides more reason why businesses should go .CO:

Lori Anne Wardi, VP of .CO Internet, discussed the vision and roadmap for the .CO domain in 2012.  Interviewed at the GigaOM RoadMap 2011 conference, Wardi said, “Over and over again it’s happened that you just can’t find the name you want because it’s taken.  Other than mortgaging your house or selling your first-born child, you’re really out of luck.”

It’s true, especially with .COM domains, whose prices have shot out of range for most entrepreneurs and all but the richest of companies.  Consider recent sales such as QX.com for $124,975 and VU.com for $700K.  Even more obscure names like HeartOfLove.com sold for $39K and EasyCareOnline.com for $13K (and both are available in .CO for $17.99 each at GoDaddy).

Wardi believes the answer to this scarcity of quality names is the new .CO domain.  “With .CO there’s a brand new, wide-open namespace with really cool, short, memorable names.  And the world’s next great Internet entrepreneurs are gravitating towards .CO.”  Wardi summed up the vision for .CO in 2012:  “Be the namespace of choice for the world’s next great entrepreneurs.”

Check out Wardi in this short interview:

During last year’s Super Bowl, GoDaddy introduced comedienne Joan Rivers as its new .CO Girl.  That commercial sparked a record 466% increase in domain name registrations within 15 minutes after it aired.  Check it out:

GoDaddy is featuring .CO in another commercial during this year’s Super Bowl on February 5, 2012.

The Internet has become crowded.  Short, memorable web addresses are history.  Until now, with .CO domains.

In this video, Google Webmaster Help confirms that Google treats .CO domains as generic:  “There have been enough people using .CO around the world that we’re not treating as if it’s specific to Colombia.”  This means that .CO domains can be used globally and will rank just as high in Google searches as domains ending in .COM, .NET, .ORG, etc.