73% of survey respondents say they’d register .net if .com was taken.

Finding good .com domains is getting harder and harder. Respondents to Domain Name Wire’s 2007 survey were asked If a .com is taken, what’s your second choice of a TLD?. For the second year in a row, .net came out on top with 73% of the vote. Last year .net took 63% of the vote. The rank order from last year stayed the same, although .org slipped a bit:

1. .Net 73%
2. .Info 17%
3. .Org 9%
4. .Biz 2%

(Total greater than 100% due to rounding). Respondents were not allowed to select country code domains, such as .de and .us, as alternatives.

I was somewhat surprised by .org’s drop given some high dollar sales in December 2006, including Date.org for $150,000 and Loan.org for $105,000. However, .org is still recognized as a non-commercial domain by most web users.

There have been a number of notable .net sales over the past year:

Sex.net $454,500
RealEstate.net $300,000
CreditCards.net $118,500
Bingo.net $56,500
Career.net $52,500
Model.net $50,000

Of course, most domain investors will simply select an alternative .com domain if their first pick is unavailable or the price is too high.

Source : DomainNameWire