: Should I register the domain name that has not popular top level domain name? Let's say for example you want to register domain name assembly.com or assembly.net and find out that they are

@Gloria169

In general you'll find you probably need both - while assemb.ly might be slightly shorter, explaining to people that it's "assemb dot el why" will probably take longer than assembly.com.

Many of the brands that make use of this particular TLD do so as a URL shortening process, but they then tend to resolve on a more common TLD, for example the Bitly domain bit.ly redirects to bitly.com, similarly ow.ly for hootsuite.com and so on.

Note also that you may well fall under far more stringent content regulation if that is your primary domain - this article from 2010 talks about the case of a domain being seized by NIC.ly because


the content of our website, in their opinion, fell outside of Libyan Islamic/Sharia Law


As has been noted, the .ly TLD is considered a "country code TLD" (it's not on Google's list of Geotargetable domains), and so will probably rank higher when searching from within Libya than for people outside of it. Your best hope is that you don't use a CDN, and host the servers in your local country so that Google can use the IP address to help localise you.

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@Frith620

It totally depends on the requirements. The .ly domain name represent their business in Libya. If my targeted visitors OR business is relevant to Libya I will surely consider it. Else, look for an other alternative OR domain name.

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