Atom.com published a very comprehensive research piece on audience data. They polled consumers and investors in the U.S. and asked them 12 questions. The headline I used here I thought was very interesting. I have written before about a name like Pandora where the .com and .net are both advertised on TV here.

Key takeaways:

• .com domains are the #1 most credible in the eyes of your customers.
• Familiarity varies across alternative extensions: 51% of consumers are familiar with .co domains.
• Tech-employed respondents are more familiar with .io and .ai domains (.io — 77%; .ai — 89%).
• 77% of consumers say trust is damaged when other brands use the same name at a different domain extension.
• 35% of people say the presence of a hyphen impacts trust in a website.
• 77% of consumers consider exact match domains important.
• Add-on words impact trust for 78% of consumers.
• 73% of investors say that a single-English-word domain helps significantly or is a major factor in securing funding.

Read and bookmark the full article here