For a business whose customers are in Ireland, pick .ie. It tells an Irish customer you are local before they read a word, it tells Google your site is aimed at Ireland without any extra set up, and good names are still available because every .ie holder has had to show a connection to Ireland. Pick .com if most of your customers are abroad. If the .com of your name is free and cheap, own both and point the .com at the .ie so nobody else can take it.
The two side by side
| .ie | .com | |
|---|---|---|
| Who runs it | .IE, the Irish registry, in Dublin | Verisign, in the United States |
| Who can register | Anyone who can show a connection to Ireland | Anyone, anywhere, no proof |
| What it says to an Irish customer | An Irish business | Nothing in particular |
| Google’s country signal | Country code domain: Google treats the site as aimed at Ireland | Generic: Google works out the target from your content, address and Business Profile |
| Good names still available | Most short Irish business names are free | Most ordinary words and surnames went years ago |
| Yearly price | Roughly €15 to €30 | Roughly €10 to €20 |
| Reach outside Ireland | Fine for the UK and EU, reads as local further away | Understood everywhere |
| Email address | name@yourshop.ie | name@yourshop.com |
Trust: what the ending says before anyone reads the page
An Irish person who sees a .ie address assumes an Irish business with an Irish phone number, Irish prices and someone they could, in theory, call in on. A .com could be a shop in Cork or a warehouse in Shenzhen, and they have to read on to find out.
The proof requirement is behind this. Setting up a .ie anonymously is hard, so the extension carries a reputation that .com cannot. The registry makes a point of this in its own marketing, and in our experience it matches how customers behave: for a plumber, a creche or a solicitor, the Irish ending removes a small doubt at the exact moment someone is deciding whether to ring.
Google and the country signal
A .ie is a country code domain, and Google uses that as a strong hint that your site is for people in Ireland. With a .com, Google has to work it out from everything else: the towns named in your text, your address and +353 number, your Google Business Profile, and the Irish sites that link to you. As we understand it, Search Console no longer has a simple switch to set a country for a generic domain, so the content has to carry the message.
Be clear about what this is and is not. The .ie is a targeting signal, not a ranking boost. A .com with “Dundrum” in its titles and a verified Business Profile in Dundrum competes perfectly well for Dundrum searches. The work that moves a local site, which we describe in what local SEO is, is the same under either ending. Nobody can promise you a position with either.
Availability
.com has been open to the world since the 1980s. Nearly every plain English word, every common surname and every “trade plus town” combination is either in use or parked by a reseller who wants four figures for it. .ie has had its proof requirement from the start, so the pool is far less picked over. Most of the clients we register names for get their first choice as a .ie and would not have got it as a .com.
When .com should be the main one
- Most of your customers are outside Ireland. A jeweller shipping to the United States and Britain, a holiday home let mostly to American visitors, a consultant with clients in London. For them the Irish ending is a mild puzzle, and .com is understood everywhere.
- You plan to trade under the name in several countries and want one address on everything.
- The .ie of your name is taken by someone who is actually using it, and you would rather build the brand than fight for the name.
Even then, register the .ie as well if it is free and point it at the .com. Irish customers type .ie out of habit, and you want them landing on you, not on an error page or a competitor.
Owning both and pointing one at the other
Having two domains does not mean having two websites. Pick one as the main address, the one on the van, the receipts and the Business Profile. At the registrar or the host, set up a permanent redirect (a 301) so that anyone who types the other one lands on the main site, page for page where possible.
Never put a copy of the site on both. Google sees two sites with the same text, splits whatever credit it would have given you between them, and you have two things to keep up to date. The same goes for email: receive on both if you like, but send from the main one only.
| Your business | What we would do |
|---|---|
| Shop, salon, trade or cafe serving one area | .ie, and buy the .com if it is free |
| Irish online shop selling mostly to Ireland and the UK | .ie as the main site, .com redirected to it |
| Online shop or service selling mostly outside Ireland | .com as the main site, .ie redirected to it |
| Tourism business with mostly overseas guests | .com as the main site if your guests are American; .ie if they are mostly Irish and British |
| Northern Ireland business trading across the island | .ie is open to you, as we understand it, under the connection to the island of Ireland rule; .co.uk alongside it if you want |
Other endings people ask about
.eu is for people and organisations in the EU and says “Europe” rather than “Ireland”, which is right for a business selling across the continent and wrong for a shop in Tralee. .co, .io and .ai are fashionable with tech companies and mean nothing to a customer looking for a dentist. .co.uk makes sense if you trade in Northern Ireland or Britain and want a British-facing address alongside the .ie.
For a local business the choice is really .ie, .com, or both. The rest are distractions.
If you already have the wrong one
If you built on a .com and your customers are all in Ireland, you do not have to tear anything up. The site works. When the time comes to redo it, register the .ie, move the site to it, redirect every old page to its new address, update the Business Profile, your email signature and your social links, and give Google a few weeks to settle. The process is in how to move your website to a new provider, and the registration side is in how to register a .ie domain.
What we do for clients
Every plan we offer includes a .ie domain registered in the client’s name, so for most of the shops and trades we work with the question answers itself. Essentials is €499 to set up and €50 a month, and Complete is €1,499 and €100, with business email on the domain included in Complete.
If you want the .com as well, tell us at the first chat. We quote any extra domain cost before registering it, set up the redirect, and make sure both names are in your name, not ours. If your customers are mostly abroad we talk about making the .com the main address instead; the site itself is built the same way. The detail of what each plan includes is on the pricing page.