1) what's the thought on 2 character (LL,NN,LN,NL) .com IDNs? they're still some available for hand reg. most that are reg'd are parked pages. if these were english language LL or LN, they'd be worth 4-6 figures. why isn't there a market for them now???? they'll soon disappear and only be available in the aftermarket.......
2) there are some great single, keyword .com IDNs available as well. many that are reg'd are also parked. again, the english language equivalents go for biiiiiig bucks.
for example, öl.com (german oil.com) is a parked page. it's a 2 character, highly searched word and yet it sits as a parked page.
3) is it always better to reg an IDN with that countries ccTLD? or does the .com still rule, even for IDNs? eg öl.com or öl.de?
for the sake of clarity, please answer
1)....
2).....
3).....
4) then comments.....
these posts get waaay off-topic too fast; so let's just stick to the point
The whole IDN thing is a huge learning curve.
1.)First you have to think in another persons language
Second you have to understand that at this point the future is very speculative. Depending upon what happens with idn.idn the market could swing in either direction. Is it possible that they will be worth a mint? Depends, At this time there is no way to tell. Is there a market, Yes but its limited and hard to break into.
2.) Most domains remain parked at this time. There is a large amount of domains owned by a few individuals. They do not have the time to dev them all so many go parked. Most are just waiting to see if they will take off someday. (mabye a year mabye 5 or more who knows)
4.) Is it always better to reg in the cctld of the country an idn? That depends on the country. .com has been around a long time and has a very strong following even in other countries. Junk cctld are always going to be junk cctld no matter if idn or not. I know that Google is making some changes to the way things happen so for the Google market it may have more weight to reg in the language of the country, but remember not every country uses google, or it is not as widely used there.
Its a crap shoot. If you want to get into it give it a try. Its a whole new world and nothing like the standard ascii domains.
i realize the 2 character domains will always be for the speculators, unless it's a 2 letter dictionary word or anagram....
but it's the keyword names that really have me confused. i reg'd a bunch of IDN.com keywords. i won't disclose them here; but in a couple of cases, the english equivalents have sold for 5-6 figures. now i realize english is the international language and the equivalent russian, german, indian, chinese, etc.. can't really be compared. but when they're not even reg'd it makes one wonder if there'll ever be a market for them.....
someone posted the swedish and russian 2L lists. in the case of sweden, it only has a population of 9million; so this explains things to a degree. for russia, india, china,etc the pops are huge though.
It's not just about words, but stats. Words that are searched in other languages, be they Russian, Swedish, Japanese, or Swahili word, will show evidence when investigated using the right tools. Google trends, Overture, Google SERP, among others. If a word was not registered yet there are several reasons why:
1. People who have looked at the word before did not find the statistics appealing enough to register (or register yet).
2. You got lucky and found a viable IDN.
Not everyone's criteria for registration is the same. The IDN world is not at the stage where any and all single words are worthwhile investments. Someday maybe, but probably not for some time.
it depends upon the country.
For example... a german IDN.de is better than the matching IDN.com
a french IDN.com is better than the matching IDN.fr
an italian IDN.com is better than the matching IDN.it
but... Note that IDN.fr and IDN.it are not allowed
You definitely have to consider gTLD vs ccTLD on a case by case basis. Price, stability, frequency of use, legal aspects, etc are all important and vary from country to country (for ccTLD obviously).
The one constant is that you can't really go wrong with .com. It may not be first choice in some countries but it definitely has some reach.
Personally, I would overweight my portfolio with .com and diversify into ccTLD where possible. Sounds rather obvious, but true.
Going back to the OP's question:
1. My feeling here is to think back to 1995. If someone had told me that I could have zq.com for cheap I would have said "why the heck would I want that". But think about how many people have initials "zq" or just want a short email or companies who's product is named the Acme ZQ. There are many possible uses and with less than 1000 possible it just makes sense, IMO.
You really have to do your research, but there is some interesting stuff out there. Take a four letter combo like SMRT. Did you know this is Czech for Death. Yes, Czech has loads of voweless words! May seem strange to us, but not to them.
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