Sedo thinks new tlds could reduce the importance of dot com?

One of the most important factors in this game is SEO, if suddenly Google will rank .web much better than .com then many webmasters will register .web to have an advantage.

excellent comments as I think all of this publicity and marketing efforts may very well extend to the end user which will break down the current thinking that you must own a .com

Also, excellent point on google and seo since who is going to buy anything else if you can't get it ranked. I personally think the engines are going to have to build more reliance on content and web development into their formula.

oldtimer said:

By the way a lot of the big players in the domain Industry who were against the new TLDs at the beginning are now gearing up to get their hands on some of those top generic keywords, because they are business people who see a good opportunity when it presents itself and are not emotionally attached to any one extension.

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Other than .INFO and .BIZ, all the rest of the 2nd wave of TLDs earlier are restricted, right?

So it's not like a domainer can just snap up a .MUSEUM or .JOBS then resell it again?

I haven't tried registering any of these earlier exotics, so i'm not sure if the registrars do allow some loose paperwork so that just about anyone can register a .AERO for domain trading purposes???

So how many of the next new TLDs will be restricted also?

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Szise said:

One of the most important factors in this game is SEO, if suddenly Google will rank .web much better than .com then many webmasters will register .web to have an advantage.

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If Google is preaching about quality content, then it doesn't matter what extension it is. The domain extension does not serve any logical relation to what kind of content a domain has.

I'm just a simpleton, but why a domain extension would rank higher than any other just doesn't make any sense.

Szise said:

One of the most important factors in this game is SEO, if suddenly Google will rank .web much better than .com then many webmasters will register .web to have an advantage.

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Why would they? It's crazy to say one gTLD should be ranked higher or lower than another.

It's like saying all orange people are bad or all green people are better than orange people.

In fact Google Reps have said several times they do not discriminate against any gTLDs.

alien51 said:

why a domain extension would rank higher than any other just doesn't make any sense.

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Well a CCtld may do better in search for that country or language, most people expect it to.

Many believe .com domains do better in search than others, and possibly also net org and CCtlds.

It seems Google say this is not so, but it is up to people what they believe and that does affect their decisions about domains - how much to pay and what to use.

Sparhawke said:

.pro = fail

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Why is it OK to register or buy a .com a couple of years ago and sell it for a few hundred bucks profit but it you sell a .pro or .info for 10-50 times that in the same time period, it's a failure? There are people out there who register an LLLL.com, hold it for 5 years and sell it for low $XXX, to me that is a failure. By the time they have costed in the registration fees, time spent searching the WHOIS, renewing, advertising, and negotiating the sale, paying Sedo 10% commission, maybe converting back to their own currency and getting stung by their bank, they could have made 10 times more stacking shelves. The people who slate alternative extensions are usually the people who have awful .coms registered 10-15 years after all the good ones got taken. The trailblazers who have premium 90s registered .coms don't bother slagging off alternative extensions because they are no threat to them, top .coms have a different customer base, and they recognise that when they were registering and buying up premium .coms people thought they were mad too. Domaining is a pyramid scheme, the pyramids get smaller, the prize gets smaller, but if you are at the top of a pyramid that becomes more attractive than it was, you can make money. Judging by the lame domains on most domain forum classified threads, most domainers active on bulletin boards are right at the bottom of a gigantic .com pyramid. Going on about how terrible alternative extensions are when they themselves make do with the dregs of somebody else's pint is like a packer in a meat factory spending their weekends marching to save capitalism.

The biggest issue with .pro is the restriction on it which is ridiculously ill-defined, for example anyone can buy a .com or other general extension but only a professional can buy a .pro

I would equate a professional as a teacher, lawyer, doctor, paramedic...that kind of thing, however it seems somewhere along the line something has gone very wrong with the process...just who decides who is a professional and what qualifies it?

There are a lot of flaws in the world, but when a system by its very nature is designed to segregate one group of people based on nothing but an empty piece of paper (when you consider business licenses which may or may not be fully kosher) there is a serious problem.

Also there is a major problem when people are buying up domains in a namespace that have absolutely sod all to do with them, when would a lawyer seriously have need to buy sex.pro or f**k.pro?

Now, I missed the whole internet explosion for various reasons I wont go into here (not least of them having a family that are a bunch of idiots who don't see the bigger picture) but I am certainly not going to whine about having no great domains from that era because that's life, there are plenty of other great domains knocking around here and there that are within my grasp.

My "big whine" is with a system that has next to no real checks with who is actually getting hold of these domains and what use they are being put to...unless prostitution has been legalised around the world I am not sure you can ever come up with a real and valid response.

Someone who wishes to register a .pro has a real and valid reason ONLY if they registration is related to their field of expertise, if it isn't then it is a complete waste of time and only serves to lock out the vast majority of users for the sake of a few who manage to manipulate the system in a way it was likely never envisioned.

Kevin Ham is a doctor, and also one of the biggest domain people in the world who also happened to be behind the .cm wildcarding debacle (I won't say he is a scammer directly)...yet he is fully allowed by definition to run riot in this domain name space. Some things just are not quite right somewhere.

Originally you had to have a company to register a .com but Network Solutions gave up policing the rule. You could have applied all your arguments against .pro to .com back then. Why would a company need to register Sex.com? A company is only a piece of paper. Only a valid company with a place of business should register .com.

oldtimer said:

By the way a lot of the big players in the domain Industry who were against the new TLDs at the beginning are now gearing up to get their hands on some of those top generic keywords, because they are business people who see a good opportunity when it presents itself and are not emotionally attached to any one extension.

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Yeah, well it will probably be the same handful of people gaming the system like usual.

Sometimes it is not what you know, it is who you know.

Brad

Ruprikkt said:

Read Michael Berkens, a prominent domain investor, take on new gTLDs.

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That is a shill article for custom gTLDs. Berkins' new company helps people launch these new gTLDs. What did you expect him to write? That an end to .com domination is not yet in sight? There is no money grab in that.

His goal is to pitch the custom gTLD concept to large companies. The majority will not be interested at all. A handful will want one for creative ad campaigns and he will pocket large consultation fees. Others will want a custom gTLD knowing all of the "dumb money" domainers are willing to put into them.

This will not encroach on .com. At least not on the levels 99% of us domain and develop in. A bidder of widgets.com may drop out at $9.9 Million rather than go to $10 Million, opting instead for the cheaper .widgets. But for people to imply that .widgets is going to seriously hurt CheapWidgets.com IMO is just stupid.

I would be afraid if .info, .mobi, .ws, .me, .whateverElse had taken a bite out of .com over the past five to ten years, but none of it has. These extensions are undesirable alternatives that society has never gotten used to. Thus why you can pick up great keywords for pocket money.

I sincerely hope people become convinced that .com is becoming less valuable due to all the new TLDs.
Then I can buy as many LLL.coms as possible and cash in for millions when people wake up.

Dot coms rule and will always rule!
They will only go up in value, IMO, after the blinders come off, and the new TLDs prove far less valuable than expected, as they always have. Even a .net is still only a fraction as valuable as a .com of the same word or phrase.

Please someone, convince as many people as possible otherwise, so we all can get some phenomenal domains at a huge bargain, and then turn around and sell them and make a huge profit six months later when the world comes out of its coma.

I own plenty of domains which aren't .coms, but I never kid myself...

Those 3 letter .in domains are worth about a hundred thousandth of the same 3 letters in a dot com!

DubDubDubDot said:

That is a shill article for custom gTLDs. Berkins' new company helps people launch these new gTLDs. What did you expect him to write? That an end to .com domination is not yet in sight? There is no money grab in that.

His goal is to pitch the custom gTLD concept to large companies. The majority will not be interested at all. A handful will want one for creative ad campaigns and he will pocket large consultation fees. Others will want a custom gTLD knowing all of the "dumb money" domainers are willing to put into them.

This will not encroach on .com. At least not on the levels 99% of us domain and develop in. A bidder of widgets.com may drop out at $9.9 Million rather than go to $10 Million, opting instead for the cheaper .widgets. But for people to imply that .widgets is going to seriously hurt CheapWidgets.com IMO is just stupid.

I would be afraid if .info, .mobi, .ws, .me, .whateverElse had taken a bite out of .com over the past five to ten years, but none of it has. These extensions are undesirable alternatives that society has never gotten used to. Thus why you can pick up great keywords for pocket money.

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It all comes down to this, which is quoted in the article,

"A registry is like a money printing machine."

They are basically going to market this crap like crazy and let the consumer/domainer take any losses, if by chance it dose take off all the better for them as well, they cannot lose $ with this model.

So unless you plan on being one of the registrars chances are high you will be one of the losers.

In fact i dont think anyone at ICAAN cares one bit if this is successful at all, its "all about the money" period.

Lets face it, there's only so many tin pot shit hole third world countries you can create hype about .co, .cm, .cc etc, they need something new to keep the money machine spinning.

Sparhawke said:

Someone who wishes to register a .pro has a real and valid reason ONLY if they registration is related to their field of expertise, if it isn't then it is a complete waste of time

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I think the reason why .PRO is not catching up with any kind of mainstream value, is because most professionals are not really looking at marketing themselves as "individual professionals".

For example, if you are an Accountant at Citigroup, your calling card would rather display your professional contact as "[email protected]". How many Accountants work for Citigroup? I'm not sure if they need to introduce themselves as "hey, contact me at "[email protected]".

Most of the time, professionals would have wanted to market themselves by being attached to an enterprise or company. Your professional value jumps up if you are attached to "Citigroup". Not to some obscure .PRO domain name.


On mainstream circles, you'll look cooler and more legit if you say you work for Boeing, or Microsoft, or even Google.

I'm not even sure why an individual professional who works for Boeing, would want to put up his own website with a .PRO domain extension. It's not like he moonlights as an aircraft mechanic of some sort. And evenif he does, i think he would get more clients if they knew he works for Boeing because his email address has a "boeing.com" attached to it.

And for individualists, my view is that they would rather launch their own company, then attach their name with THAT company. They won't market themselves as individuals.

And finally in the real world, most customers don't care (or even know the significance of .PRO "trust" validation). If they want to go to the dentist, they'll just ask feedback from friends to get a recommendation. And they'll have their tooth pulled by that dentist with or without .PRO on his resume. Doctors just need to display their license number. They don't need any .PRO certification to appear legit. And most doctors would rather be vouched by the hospital they work for, rather than launching their own .PRO domain just to prove that some internet body checked out their credentials for good measure.

Launching the ".PRO" TLD is good "in theory". But it is not practical. Thus, the failure.

There are changes that do take place in businesses, now we will be having new domain name extensions which may see the popularity of dot com extension diminishing. Sedo has realized this and it cannot be blamed for promoting other extensions.

I highly welcome the idea of ICANN permitting new domain name extensions and such they should allow business/companies to register their own domain name extension and be charging fees for whoever uses it. For instance Nokia Company can register .Nokia extension and if I own a business selling nokia cell phones then I can go ahead and register a domain name called cellphone.nokia. For having used the .nokia extension which is a trademark, then I will have to pay Nokia Company some fees for having used their extension.

I think 2012 (and maybe 2013) will be a good year for BUYING .coms , .nets , .orgs.

I think .com is going to be devalued as a result of the coming marketing blitz. I'm not convinced that small business startups can afford a .com and at some point it doesn't matter as you can achieve ranking with other extensions equally well with the proper time and effort in development.

Also, in response to Alien51's comment which I do appreciate..maybe a better email would be [email protected]

ps. I'm not sure i like [email protected] to well though.

I suggest Google just start the .google registry which gets top (and only) SE ranking thereby wiping out every other domain extension that ever existed.......BRILLIANT!

I am more concerned with the effect that Apps for the iphone, nook, etc., as well as the electronic gadgets themselves are going to have on how people surf.

Once you have a Nook, are you really going to go over to AlexandersNicheBookstore.books and make a purchase or are you just going to click to download the book automatically? Similarly, if Wal-Mart has an App for their store that comes preloaded on a gadget, how many will go straight to that?

I think there will always be traffic on the net from which to cull a living, but I think that other technologies are going to have a greater impact on sales than additional extensions.

alien51 said:

For example, if you are an Accountant at Citigroup, your calling card would rather display your professional contact as "[email protected]". How many Accountants work for Citigroup? I'm not sure if they need to introduce themselves as "hey, contact me at "[email protected]".

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That's not my play with .pro. I look at it as a popular trademark suffix that works with a broad range of keywords. My customers are web developers and entrepreneurs who want a memorable single word domain for $3,000-$10,000 as opposed to $100,000-$1m. Like me, they appreciate that domain names will confer less ranking benefit in Google in the future so there is no point overpaying for a .com. All you need in a name is for people to remember it, for it to be short, and catchy, domain names like Golf.pro, Poker.pro, Football.pro, Game.pro, Business.pro and Office.pro tick all those boxes. I'm not against .com, big companies will continue to buy them for 6 and 7 figure sums occasionally and I intend to sell into that market with what I already hold. I personally won't be buying any new gTLDs but I am confident I will continue to sell more and more .pros simply because they are catchy but affordable and that's what people starting a business online want. They should be spending their startup budget on original content, graphic design, SEO, and link building, not domain names that will confer increasingly little ranking benefit.

webdomain said:

I'm not convinced that small business startups can afford a .com and at some point it doesn't matter as you can achieve ranking with other extensions equally well with the proper time and effort in development.

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That's exactly what i'm saying before. That perhaps the reason why the new TLDs a few years back, never took off is because the great keyword domains from those extensions were AGAIN snapped-up by domainers who hostaged them for resell. Thus, they never get developed into a full "end-user" kind of website.

I'm sure with the coming launch of the new set of TLDs. A whole ARMY of domainers are now preparing their warchest to snap keyword-rich domains like madness.

That's why i've been asking: Does anyone know a fully-functioning rich-content website on some exotic extension that ranks on top of Google search, if i type the keywords associated with its domain????

webdomain said:

Also, in response to Alien51's comment which I do appreciate..maybe a better email would be [email protected]

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Yes, and i'm sure you would also need to hire a lawyer from "Lawyers.pro" to defend you against trademark infringement from Boeing by doing that.

I really don't think Corporations will agree to license their names like that. They are very protective about their brands.

I'm not suggesting trademark infringement as we all know boeing is not a generic keyword. I am suggesting however that .pro would be a good domain for boeing to own as it is one of the few that could actually enhance their brand.

And for the record boeing.pro is taken by someone already...see here: facts.pro/whois/result.php?domain=boeing.pro

I have been part of the developing team for cashloan.me for about 4 months and it is ranking under the keywords "cash loan" around page 6 in google for the last month or so...yes, alternate extensions can rank without question.

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back to the main subject of this thread. I also think that many of the new extensions won't appeal to a large enough demographic required to sustain a registry. .film, .eco, .green, .loan aren't applicable to more than a handful of keyword domain names. Unless one business feels investment in an entire extension is worth owning its industry category on the net, I really think it is going to be difficult to get 50 to 100K domain names registered under some of these. I just think to be truly a success and carry a real registry it needs to appeal to a large enough demographic. Few of the ones, I've read will..(imho)

alien51 said:

That's why i've been asking: Does anyone know a fully-functioning rich-content website on some exotic extension that ranks on top of Google search, if i type the keywords associated with its domain????

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Yes
.coop domain => nic.coop
.museum domain => musedoma.museum

etc

.@@@ .%%% .&&& .*** .((( .))) .!!! .### .$$$ .]]] .??? .>>> .+++ .COM .<<< ./// .""" .=== .--- .,,, .<<< .::: .;;; .''' .~~~ .``` .___ .^^^

eventually they will only make .com stand out even more

alien51 said:

That's exactly what i'm saying before. That perhaps the reason why the new TLDs a few years back, never took off is because the great keyword domains from those extensions were AGAIN snapped-up by domainers who hostaged them for resell. Thus, they never get developed into a full "end-user" kind of website.

I'm sure with the coming launch of the new set of TLDs. A whole ARMY of domainers are now preparing their warchest to snap keyword-rich domains like madness.

That's why i've been asking: Does anyone know a fully-functioning rich-content website on some exotic extension that ranks on top of Google search, if i type the keywords associated with its domain????

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Well in .mobi about 5000 top keywords were reserved and auctioned, many with development requirements. At the last auction in 2008 prices crashed. Most are available free if you agree a development plan with the registry, including one and two letter domains.

Results of that? Poor at best. So I am not convinced it is domainers keeping people off exotics, it is site owners playing safe.

And that includes me. I put several mobis on front page of google, some number 2 or 3, others number one on mobile search. But people cannot remember that extension and if you speak it they can't even spell it, so I have been moving those sites onto domains people actually recognise like .info and .biz.

If you just depend on search it does not matter, but it hurts when people can't even hear the name of your site correctly.

alien51 said:

Does anyone know a fully-functioning rich-content website on some exotic extension that ranks on top of Google search, if i type the keywords associated with its domain????

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Germany.travel ranks 2 for the keyword Germany behind Wikipedia.

Austria.info ranks 2 for the keyword Austria behind Wikipedia.

Wien.info / Austria.info (same site) ranks 2 for the keyword Vienna behind Wikipedia.

Slovenia.info ranks 2 for the keyword Slovenia behind Wikipedia.

Domain extensions make little difference to where sites rank, it's all about the site content, coding, and links into the site. If a professional outfit decides to develop a site on any extension, they can do whatever they want with the right budget.

An amateur developer using a template or content management system with no SEO or link building skills, and a limited budget for promotion will fail to rank for a competitive keyword or phrase as comprehensively on a premium .com as on any alternative extension. It's not about what domain you have, it's what you do with it and the people who know how to develop and promote or can pay somebody to do it for them use .com courtesy of a 20 year first mover advantage. For people who don't have the cash or the skill, .com is fool's gold because it costs alot but confers almost no benefit in terms of ranking in comparison to everything else that matters.

Premium .coms do have benefits, customers trust you more, suppliers are more likely to open a trade account for you, it's easier to generate press interest, advertising is stickier. However, you do not get better ranking in search engines with a premium .com. I developed a baby products website on a premium .com and my business came from Google adwords and type in traffic, not organic search. You do not overtake established businesses on the first page of Google for competitive short to medium tail keywords without spending alot of money or being highly skilled at SEO and link building.

My advice to anybody developing a website is not to waste a fortune on a .com. If you have to get a .com, register a free one by fusing 2 words together like YouTube or FaceBook. If you want a catchy single word domain, buy an $X,XXX priced domain in an alternative gTLD, that way you won't have any problems with geo targeting on Google and you will have plenty of start up money left over to spend on things that actually matter like SEO and link building.