In July of 2010, Overstock.com acquired the rights to O.co and officially began the process of rebranding in January 2011. In terms of pure branding, this seems like a reasonable move; i.e., Overstock.com no longer simply carries “overstocked” products so the old name no longer makes total sense. From a usability perspective, there are now fewer characters to type in the web address, which is a bonus for users on mobile devices. While the change seems reasonable from a branding and usability perspective, users may wonder why they are still directed to www.overstock.com even though they typed in O.com? Further, Slingshot clients may wonder if moving from a .com to a .co is a good SEO move.

Breaking it Down

For those that aren’t familiar, TLDs (top level domains) like .com, .net, and .org, are considered generic and denoted by the initialization gTLD. Generally, these are the most common types seen by users in the United States while browsing the Internet. In addition to these gTLDs, there are country specific ones denoted by the initialization ccTLD (country code top level domain). Examples of these include .us for the United States, .in for India, and .ca for Canada. In the case of O.co, this domain corresponds to the ccTLD of Colombia.

In terms of SEO, Slingshot has seen no indication that one c ranks better in search engines than a ccTLD when considerations for location are excluded. In theory, O.co should be able to rank just as well as Overstock.com. However, in its current implementation, O.co is only being used as a vanity URL that redirects search engines and users to Overstock.com.

As the name implies, vanity URLs are ones that are more aesthetically pleasing than others and are typically used when a long, “ugly” URL cannot fit on a business card or other piece of marketing material.

Using Vanity URLs

While many brands will create vanity URLs strictly for placement on marketing materials, Overstock has created one for branding as well as SEO. As they continue to roll out their new brand, O.co is slowly building up the trust and authority of its new domain name by garnering digital relevance signals like links and social mentions. Technically, it is also taking full advantage of these signals with a proper implementing of a “permanent” server side 301 redirect. Google and Bing have both confirmed that permanent 301 redirects pass link value.

When their rebranding is complete, it’s likely that O.co will cease to be a vanity URL that redirects to the old Overstock.com domain and will be come the official, canonical domain of the brand. Provided that Overstock.com eventually implements a 301 redirect on its current domain to O.co, they will have successfully rebranded themselves in the eyes of users and search engines.

If you have any questions, leave a comment below or Tweet me @SaintPhillip.