Brian Krassenstein

Why .com Domain Names will be the Gold Standard

Every month or two it seems as though new domain extensions are released by ICANN. They have one for almost every country now, and are now doing continents, such as .eu and .asia. We have .us, .biz, .org, .net, .mobi, etc, etc, etc. You would think that as new extentions are released it would deflate the values of the already existing domains out there. This is not the case though. .com domain names will always actually gain value as ICANN releases new top level domain extensions. Why?

When most people think about the internet and a website, they think .com. Even if they hear a domain name on the radio, see it on tv, or in a magazine, or are told about it by a friend, they will always think it ends in .com, even if it doesn't. The large corporations and the most popular sites out there all end in .com. Only approximately 1/6th of the worlds population has access to the internet today. Even then, only about half of them are able to get online at their convenience. Having said this, things are changing, and changing fast. China and India who account for over 1/3rd of the worlds population are growing rapidly. More and more people in these countries will gain internet access very soon. It is predicted that the internet population of China and India will be 5 times what it is today by the year 2011. Now imagine if only a small fraction of these people decide to create their own websites. The demand for good keyword rich domains will explode. Most of them will not be able to hand register the .com versions so they will go for the cheaper versions such as .in, and .cn. When they do this, they are actually making money for whoever owns the .com verion of their domain since a good portion of their type in traffic will type ".com" instead of ".in" or ".cn".

Some other tlds that I recommend buying and holding onto in addition to ".com" are:

.es - These are being used for spanish language domains. Should grow significantly
.cn - China is large, very large, and .cn domains seem to be what most chinese recognize as the authoritive tld extension
.de - This is the German extension. For some reason Germans, unlike many people elsewhere in the world tend to love their country code top level domains

All in all, if you are thinking about investing in good generic or abbreviation domain names, go after the .coms. Over the long haul the risks to .coms are significantly less then that of other extensions.

stub

In light of your comments above. I'd add .in to your short list of cctlds. 2 other countries comparable to .de are .co.uk (UK) and .ca (Canada), imho. I think the cctld is always a good investment if the target market is a specific country. No matter where you live.

Brian Krassenstein

Agree with you stub. I should have added especially .co.uk to that list.

bricio

will be?
they already are!!!


like germans, brazilians also love the .com.br and it is very used; we are 180 million people but i dont see people buying or selling many of them in other forums than brazilian ones

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Ross

Yeah most people will go for a .com but a local business in inda, australia, and the UK will definetily pick up their extension in a lot of cases before considering the .com. UK and Australia are prime examples of countries that would prefer a .com.au or .co.uk over a .com. Those are very well accepted in those countries.

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hawkeye

uhh.., O...K.., Is this the Holy Grail of Domain Insight or something, we've been waiting till now to hear??

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HeyGeek

The guy took the time to write it out, if he feels he has something to share there is no need to make fun of him.

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hawkeye

Didn't make fun of him, just asked a question.

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Brian Krassenstein

No offense taken. I wrote it for my subscribers of a list I had of people just getting started in Domain investing and tarding. Thought I'd post it here as well.

Brian

Brian Krassenstein

I've noticed that the .co.in's are becoming more popular in India in recent months. Indians generally look more at .coms, however with the use of .co.ins by some of the largest Indian companies and companies operating in India, more Indians are become aware of these extensions.

tpruby

I always think .CA first...even before I got into domaining. When buying online, I always chose .ca over .com ( again before I even new what domaining was)...

I have gotten the impression over the last few months that some people really aren't aware of how successful .ca really is.

Playstation chooses to advertise playstation.ca and not .com, as just one example out of MANY.

.CA is absolutely everywhere in Canada. I think your off the mark a little in suggesting that Germans are nearly alone in using their ccTLD.

sdsinc

ccTLDs are big in most of Europe too

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gpmgroup

This isn't strictly true,

1985
.com - for commercial organizations, but unrestricted
.net - originally for network infrastructures, now unrestricted
.org - originally for organizations not clearly falling within the other gTLDs

.gov - for governments and their agencies in the United States
.edu - for post-secondary educational establishments
.mil - for the US military

The 250 or so country codes which were essentially derived from ISO 3166 This isn't quite right for example the code for UK is gb [Great Britain] and Britain uses .uk for the United Kingdom

The list is also subject to revision from time to time like just recently out goes .yu and incomes .me ;-)



1988
.int - for international organizations established by treaty

.nato was added in the 1980s but later added under .int i.e. .nato.int and then .nato wasn't really used and finally deleted in 1996

2001
.info - for informational sites, but unrestricted
.biz - for business use
.name - for families and individuals

and the more restricted
.aero - for the air transport industry .cat - for Catalan language/culture
.coop - for cooperatives
.pro - for certain professions
.museum - for museums

2004 - 2008
.travel - for travel agents, airlines, hoteliers, tourism bureaus, etc.
.mobi - for sites catering to mobile devices
.asia - for companies, organizations and individuals in the Asia-Pacific region

and the very specialist
.jobs - for employment-related sites
.tel - for services involving connections between the telephone network and the web

The only Non ICANN TLD to be added to the root was in 2005
.eu which is run by Eurid on behalf of the European Commission for Europe


Number of registrations probably isn't a good indication of TLD usage so here is a chart showing the number of pages indexed by Google for the newer TLDs domainers tend to buy. New gTLD pages indexed by Google January 2008

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john_karr

Nice!

evirtual1

In australia you can tell the older business's they use .com

all the new ones go straight to .com.au ....... it's our standard and is to be seen as a local australian company

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Internet Domain Names

akcampbell

.Com is the lowest risk domaining strategy but I think it will also yield the lowest return in the medium to long run. There are several factors that will work against .com;

1) .Coms are already very expensive. For example, Savings.com sold for $1.9m in 2003, I bought Savings.info for $4,000 2 weeks ago. I think there is more chance of me selling Savings.info for $40,000 5 years from now than the owner of Savings.com selling for $19m this year.

You could say I'm comparing an exceptional end user .com sale price with an alternative extension reseller price or that I could have got a decent 2 or 3 word Savings .com domain for $4,000 and that would outperform my .info.

To the first counterargument, I would say it's difficult to buy quality .coms at reseller prices which is why domainers should consider alternative extension and to the second, I would argue that since there are thousands of permutations of good 2 and 3 word Savings .com domain names, they are never going to have the exclusivity, brandability, or destination value of single keywords which is in part why somebody paid $1.9m for Savings.com in the first place.

As .Com values rise, they are moving out of reach of most domain buyers. Yes, you can buy or register 2, 3 and 4 word .coms or LLLL.coms etc but it's difficult to charge premium prices when something doesn't stand out from the crowd. Single keyword alternative extension domains are easier to remember and are more brandable and unique.

2) More people are becoming familiar with alternative extensions increasing their useability and reducing the premium they are prepared to pay for .com. Search engines will give more weight to content and less to extension in the future. This will hurt .Com and benefit alternative extensions.

3) Software advancement and easy to set up templates will make most sites replicable by amateur enthusiasts. Without a technology barrier to entry, the expected profits for most genres of site will fall.

For example, PHPbb and other bulletin board equivalents make forum keywords less valuable because adversiting revenue gets spread more thinly across more and more specialised forums. The upshot of all this is that people will find cheaper alternative extension prices more agreeable for commoditised sites leaving overpriced .coms out in the cold.

4) Parking and PPC will become less lucrative. Browsers and search engines will block out or transfer traffic from parked sites. High .Com valuations are backed by PPC and will be hit by this.

5) Type in traffic will decline as search engines improve their content focus and Internet user knowledge develops.

Direct nagivation traffic currently accounts for 1 in 6 hits. In my view, 5 people are searching correctly and 1 person is doing it wrong if they want to get to the best quality content in the shortest possible time. Over time I think Google and other search engines will improve to the point where the direct navigation user will change their behaviour. .Com valuations are more exposed to a reduction in direct navigation than any other extension so it would hit their traffic and reduce valuations.

Although domain valuations as a whole are likely to rise across the board as Internet usage in countries like China and India grows, I think the best domaining returns will come from premium keywords in alternative gTLD extensions. Established domain experts won't agree because they hold .Coms and want to protect their golden goose.

.Com will always be the dominant extension but Internet users will accept alternative extensions more than they do now and that will give them an edge in terms of domaining return on investment.

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Total.pro Registrar Stats Updated For Feb 09 - 17 Jun 09