Like many of you I no longer use the yellow pages to look for products and services but instead rely on the major search engines Google, Bing and Yahoo. When I need a product or service for either personal or business use I simply enter the keyword or phrase in to my favourite search engine and based on the search results I will decide how to proceed. Getting your business to rank high on "natural" search results pages is important but just as important is whether a potential customer will click through to your site or to your competitors site.
There are many reasons why people choose one business over another when both rank high on search engines but I want to discuss only one for now - your domain name type.
Many in the United States, where the .com top level domain (TLD) rules the day, may not know that Canada has their own TLD with the .ca extension. The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) did a survey showing that 60% of Canadians prefer .ca for on-line shopping. Being under Canadian law and not having customs or exchange rate issues were the top reasons cited. That has been my personal experience as well. Like most other Canadian consumers I prefer dealing with businesses using the .ca TLD for purely practical reasons that are not all all driven by nationalistic tendencies.
