CIRA is the entity responsible for the health and success of the Canadian internet. Its primary mandate is to convince Canadian small business owners to register with a .CA when putting their business online.

The problem is that while Canadian small business owners are passionate about their businesses, when it comes to choosing a web domain, they’re apathetic at best. It’s seen as a small and innocuous choice that couldn’t possibly have any real impact, and many simply default to the runaway category leader, .COM – a brand so well-established and ubiquitous that it is virtually synonymous with the internet itself.

Considering these challenges, the question was clear: how do we get small business owners to snap out of simply defaulting to .COM and choose .CA instead?

A small business owner is launching a website. Before she does, though, she needs to pick a domain name. Both .CA (Canadian) and .COM are available. As she thinks it over, an imposing figure pays her a visit to see that she makes the correct “Canadian” decision. It’s not a representative from .CA domains, or even a person at all. It’s a Canada goose. And as any Canadian knows, there are few things in the world more persuasive than an angry Canada goose. In the end, of course, she chooses wisely, and the goose abides.

Early indications tell us Canadians are, in fact, listening to the goose. From our September launch to the end of 2022, claimed preference for .CA over.COM increased by 8% and purchase intent by 13% amongst our all-important audience: Canadian small business owners. These positive sentiments translated into actual registrations, with .CA domains rising by 37, 743, clearly at the expense of .COM, which declined by 9,930 over the same period.