Startups needs to think twice when they decide to use a .io domain.
.io domains aren't top level domains like .com, .org, or .net. They're ccTLDs - country specific domains - like .co.uk, .us, or .com.au. Io is the local domain for the Indian Ocean states. Unlike the TLDs, and a handful of the early ccTLDs, Google doesn't treat .io as a global domain - it treats them as domains specific to the Indian Ocean. This means you're immediately at a disadvantage at being found by your target market via a google search (unless they're specifically searching for your brand).
So while you're more likely to get a common-word .io domain, and they have the obvious relation with technology, if your start up is going to be relying on search engine traffic or might be dealing in a slightly grey area, you should probably just save yourself the bother and go for getX.com or Xapp.com, where X is your website name.
I don't have the source (tried to find but buried), but Matt Cutts has stated because so many tech companies use .io as input/output webapp connotation, that behind the scenes, google treats it as a gTLD even though technically it's a ccTLD. I know because I did a ton of research for http://pineapple.io as well as talking to a lot of other people who were ranking their .io domain.
Likewise, there is a movement to get it officially branded as a gTLD just like .me, etc.
> The question came up about whether it matters which TLD (top level domain) you’re using. For example, do .com domains carry more weight than a .net, .us, .info, etc. He said that TLD doesn’t matter–that’s the way Larry and Sergey originally designed the Google algorithm. The algorithm doesn’t care where the page is located, it’s all about pagerank (LINKS) of the particular page. At the end of answering this question he did admit that they might have started to look at particularly cheap (and spammy) TLDs differently than other TLDs–or they might start considering TLD in their algorithm if they’re not already doing so.
I own the putio.com domain and they approached me when they first launched to buy it, presumably to redirect to put.io but maybe because of these rules.
I haven't got any plans for it as a website, I use the domain for email. Putio is how my son used to pronounce computer when he was small. I asked what they were offering, it was a token amount and I preferred to keep it.
