Jhsto

Hi,

Today I noticed that there seems to not be many domainers in Finland and got an idea to search domains with ö and ä -characters, which are only used in few more countries top of Finland. Now, I was amazed that domains equal for jobsearch.com and saving.com were available, with .com ending, but in Finnish of course.
????: NamePros.com http://www.namepros.com/cctld-discussion/745476-country-specific-domains.html

I wondered should I be investing to these domains? Seems like in Finland the domaining hasnt developed at all, there are yet no forums about online administration even. So, what you think, have I hit something big or am I just too excited?

I was also about to setup the second coupon site in the whole Finland, but then made my research and noticed that the competitor does not have more than 15 visitors in a day.



So, what you guys think? Worth of try? I know a lot of web developing and SEO. For the record, some Finnish sites dont have meta description nor keywords at all.

EDIT: Also, a deal website advertised in TV has estimated 15'000 visitors a day. However, this one has no meta data either. At all.

sdsinc

In Europe, the ccTLDs are very popular and in fact often (if not always) preferred to .com.

So if you have good Dutch keywords in .nl, they are worth money.
????: NamePros.com http://www.namepros.com/showthread.php?t=745476
But the same keywords in .com are probably worth little.

There is a reason for that: Dutch is mainly spoken in the Netherlands + Belgium and the Netherlands Antilles I guess, so there is a stronger bond between the ccTLD and the language. Same with other languages like the Nordic ones. I assume the same holds true for Finnish.

In Sweden everybody uses .se, so Swedish keywords in .com or any other extension are not really popular.

So if you want to cater to the Finnish market, I guess you have to use a .fi domain. A .com would look odd and less trustworthy. At best, people would think you're just some foreign operation and nobody taught you basic marketing like: use .fi domains to address Finnish people.

Now in French or Spanish, strong keywords in .com have value, in part because these languages are spoken in many countries and a gTLD enables you to reach out to the speakers internationally...

So as you can see it depends on the language.

The bottom line is that if you find a great domain that is still available, as yourself why. There might be a good reason.

To conclude this long post, many European end users register their name in their local extension only and don't bother with the .com, which remains available...
.com is justified when you are doing business internationally but most businesses are local in nature, they don't need the global reach of .com.

__________________
NameNewsletter.com - free lists of available domain names
ZoneFiles.net (beta) - ccTLD and gTLD droplists

Jhsto

Thanks for your point of view, but as odd as it may sound, some big local stores have .com extensions here. I have to think about choosing .com or .fi further now.

Also, what I also asked was about domains like ööö.com, which can now be registered. Registering a domain with ö or ä is quite recent thing here and sometimes people try to access a site with those characters, even though companies with ö or/and ä in their names just replace them with o or a. I'm bit bad at explaining this.

Plus, a reason why I'm not interested to buy a Finnish domain is that it firstly costs double as .com or .net, you cant have whois protection and changes of your domain and account passwords will be sent to you by mail. I mean by the normal snail mail. All registrars go trough this main registrar Ficora, so the process will always be the same regardless where you register it.
????: NamePros.com http://www.namepros.com/showthread.php?t=745476

Any website ideas are also accepted, since there is a lot of space for new web ideas in Finland.

STP

These coupon sites are catchy almost everywhere, I don't see Finland as a problem here, it's that guy's fault he's having 15 visitors per day.

Develop your name, market it and monetize it, you'll thank me later. In Romania for ex( which is several times poorer than Finland), there are dozens of coupon sites, discount stuff and most of them are making a lot of money ( aggressive marketing and high visibility).

Cheers!

Jhsto

Thanks! I'll do as you said, I just have to get a comfortable domain and I'm set.