I generally try to stick to .com extensions for my niche websites. But I'm thinking of setting up an informational website to deal with divorce and custody issues, so I'm wondering if a country specific extension might be more suitable in this case. What do you think?

Yes, I think if you're a business you should have one for the country your company is based out of, as well as the .COM version. It really depends on your needs.. We use .US, .COM and .NET.

Great advice, Juan. Absolutely use country specific extensions for geo-specific target audiences.

And don't forget the .info and .biz extensions - they cost next to nothing, but it's nice to lock those up too when registering domains.

Thanks for the advice. I was only thinking in terms of the country specific extension. Thanks for pointing out the importance of locking up the others as well, if they're available. Which leads to a second question. Do I go for a domain if it's not available in .com or find one that works for both .us and .com?

Unless I'm targeting a country-specific market or I need to make sure the local extension for my domain isn't taken, I generally would not opt for country specific extensions.

A country-specific extension will be great for a country-specific audience.

You must take care. Nowadays google isn't considering only the TLD for country based SERPS. The IP address and Meta tags will count also.

I don't think so. I would feel like not having a domain if I didn't have the .com version of the domain. Of course it is not true that I feel that .com is the only choice and the other extensions are second class extensions.

If your work is targeted and based on SEO then geo contry TLD are ok but if your traget is world wide .com .net .org are more suitable.

gTLD are suitable for any targeted region then ccTLD is useful for certain country mostly

Since you are considering to setup a site that offers information about divorce and custody issues, choosing a country specific extension would be the right decision. Different countries have different laws of dealing with such cases, hence you wouldn't expect the site to be useful for such visitors in any ways, therefore you may drop the idea of registering a domain with generic TLD's.

That would be helpful since divorce and custody laws differ from one place to another. For instance, divorce is not legal in my country.

I don't think you're going to get rich on buying and selling these. .com's are still the leader in value as it's the most commonly used tld.

Registering your company domain in other tld's can serve it's purpose as well. Such as others gobbling up that domain and holding it hostage.