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discuss Where .com is Not King

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Where in the world is .com not king?

Where that other extensions are more popular, accepted, etc.?

Any other heavy rival extensions in the world regions, demographics, other than ccltds?
 
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I was actually going to edit in my post regarding ccltd popularity with a thought that they would be rivals. Thanks.

Frankly, 40% is lower than I thought for .com


I think it is about 42.5 %, from a link posted here sometime ago.
 
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My guess is the United Kingdom
 
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My guess is the United Kingdom


A Summary of the Most Popular ccTLDs
Rank ccTLD Number of Registrations
1 .CN 23.0M
2 .TK 22.5M
3 .DE 16.2M
4 .UK 13.3M
5 .TW 6.5M
6 .NL 5.9M
7 .RU 5.7M
8 .BR 4.1M
9 .EU 3.7M
10 .FR 3.4M

From the link I posted above.
 
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As an American, we also get Canadian Broadcasting Network along with all the same exact advertising that Canadians see. I find it pretty surprising how much .CA gets used over .COM emphasizing Canadian presence, Canadian dollars, Canadian rules and regulations, etc. Canadians have a lower population count per square mile/kilometer so they never are added in "Top 10" lists. Maybe one day, I will count the number of .CA vs .COM I see on CBN and report my findings!
 
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As an American, we also get Canadian Broadcasting Network along with all the same exact advertising that Canadians see. I find it pretty surprising how much .CA gets used over .COM emphasizing Canadian presence, Canadian dollars, Canadian rules and regulations, etc. Canadians have a lower population count per square mile/kilometer so they never are added in "Top 10" lists. Maybe one day, I will count the number of .CA vs .COM I see on CBN and report my findings!

If and when India catches up (1.3 billion population), .in will be in top 3.
 
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Definitely South Africa.. Co.za 99%
 
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There's a number of factors to consider about what suits (putting availability to the side for the moment)

Reach is the obvious factor in choice of a Com over a cctld. Are you looking from a heavy marketing perspective or simply a presence and locator. Nature of Business and it's primary operating medium also play heavy in the choice.

The effect of Google location search has become insignificant in recent years due to their own internal metrics now weighing heavily in favor of paid for placements/ads. No matter where they come from in the world

No business wants to ignore the .com but it's significance can be marginalized in the vast majority of small to medium sized businesses anywhere outside the US
 
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In France too, people usually try Domain.FR first.
One day, I sold one Domain(.)fr while Domain(.)com was in sale by HugeDomains but the buyer was not interested !
 
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I just want to tell you one thing that is very important: "com" is just a com.
Estibot shows one value. Godaddy quite different. Why is it like that?!
Google is everything today. Type-in traffic is almost history. Most important is the link popularity, backlinks, page rank(alexa rank). Domain should be short or have a word.
I've sold a lot of projects for millions in the past. I understand everything. I explained why. Why not expand, upgrade things and increase sales?
 
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Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania
 
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Local ccTLD is more popular than .com in most countries, although .com might be high in places where the ccTLD has some crazy restrictions or prices.

However there are also countries where TLDs other than local and .com are popular, for example:
- in EU countries there is .eu, which is often preferred over .com
- in Sweden there's .nu that was made popular because "nu" means "now" in Swedish
- in Norway .as at one time gained popularity due to restrictions on .no (AS = public stock company)
 
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It would be interesting to have a list of country code registrations not as an absolute number but expressed in terms of the population of GDP of the country. I think if you did that .ca and numerous European country codes would do well, along with a few others. I think there is little doubt about the strength of extensions like .de and .uk/co.uk as well as others.

Certainly in Canada I think it is true that small and medium sized businesses are more apt to select .ca than .com, but any large business will almost always have both, and some will use only .com. Surveys (admittedly sponsored by CIRA!) have shown high respect and trust for .ca, and even consumer preference for certain types of service.

I wonder if the reason .us did not develop as strongly as a country code is because of not just .com but also .edu and .gov. In most of the world the highly trusted government and educational sites are on the country code, and that helps with trust and respect. Like I go to government sites it is on a .ca. But in .us, there are separate TLDs for that, so the carry over of trust is absent, somewhat.

The .eu is an interesting case. @jmcc has a lot on it in his recent book.

Bob
 
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And I started a one man revolution for .IE .....that's because I'm Kook.ie
 
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In France too, people usually try Domain.FR first.
One day, I sold one Domain(.)fr while Domain(.)com was in sale by HugeDomains but the buyer was not interested !

There's also the possibility that the asking price from HugeDomains for the .com was out of reach for the buyer.
 
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.com is the king everywhere.

It is not about the number of regs or the number of names you see in the wild.

It is about the ambition and growth. If you are a French company with ambitions and aspirations beyond your borders, you gotta have your exact .com

You also have more flexibility: you have .com, you can operate with just that domain name globally just fine. You have your local cctld, you are limited to one country pretty much.

Add to this the fact that a) .com is de-facto cctld of the biggest economy of the world, USA; b) it is poised to receive leaked traffic from any namesake anywhere, especially from .co c) there are many large countries that use .com as part of their cctld, like .com.au, .com.tr, .com.br, .com.ar d) you immediately establish yourself as the DEFAULT company for the name, and not just in one industry like a TM could do for you. Consider "Apple". Even an apple producing company wouldn't want to name itself "Apple" nowadays, even if they legally could. And Amazon is mostly associated with the 1 trln company, not a region in SA. Could they do it if they did not own .com? Heck, no!
 
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It is about the ambition and growth. If you are a French company with ambitions and aspirations beyond your borders, you gotta have your exact .com

Yes, but if they want to operate locally, they need to have .fr

You also have more flexibility: you have .com, you can operate with just that domain name globally just fine. You have your local cctld, you are limited to one country pretty much.

Global brands like google, ebay etc. need local domains like .fr, .de, .pl if they want to operate on these markets. Because that's what people will type. They won't type google.com because "it's a global company". They will type google.cctld because they want their local version of that site.

Add to this the fact that a) .com is de-facto cctld of the biggest economy of the world, USA;

Yes, and only that. Every other country has its own cctld that people use (type) in the first order.

b) it is poised to receive leaked traffic from any namesake anywhere, especially from .co

I don't know much about Columbia, but in many countries not having your local domain functional or at least redirected euqals missed visitors or "leaked traffic" if you don't own it. For example in Poland many people send mails to [someone]@gmail.pl and they bounce because google didn't care to configure the domain (and at first they didn't even own it for a couple of years). I've seen it firsthand lots of times and many of these mails are lost forever, not being re-sent.

c) there are many large countries that use .com as part of their cctld, like .com.au, .com.tr, .com.br, .com.ar

Yeah, and you can be 90% sure if you tell them to visit yoursite.com, they will type yoursite.com.au etc. Muscle memory and all that.

d) you immediately establish yourself as the DEFAULT company for the name, and not just in one industry like a TM could do for you. Consider "Apple". Even an apple producing company wouldn't want to name itself "Apple" nowadays, even if they legally could. And Amazon is mostly associated with the 1 trln company, not a region in SA. Could they do it if they did not own .com? Heck, no!

There is some truth to that. If you have ambitions to be global etc. So I won't argue. But this doesn't invalidate any of the above. Also if you have a .com and a US trademark, but someone else owns for example .de and DE/EU trademark, you're screwed on that market anyway.
 
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One more thing - the language. For English words/phrases .com makes sense. For some languages like Spanish, that are used across many countries, makes some sense as well. But for languages that are spoken mainly in one or two countries, ccTLDs will perform an order of magnitude better. .com will be seen as inferior in lots of cases. Secondary choice at best.
 
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If and when India catches up (1.3 billion population), .in will be in top 3.

I agree whole heartily
.in is where the next eCom bubble will be. IMO
 
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This is how CENTR report state in Europe in their most recent summary report ( late fall 2019)
"Across the continent, country market share for local ccTLDs is 54% on average, based on registrants based in the country. For almost all countries, the local ccTLD is the largest by local registrations, followed generally by .com or .eu."
 
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There's also the possibility that the asking price from HugeDomains for the .com was out of reach for the buyer.

No my asking price was higher than HugeDomains's,
 
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I think in Italy and Turkey .net is comparable to .com but I'm not sure.

In UK, if people don't prefer .com, then they should drop .co in their .co.uk, but they don't. It is like Germans preferring .co.de to .de. Very strange.

In Russia, I suspect .biz and .pro are more popular compared to other countries.

Can .biz replace .com after corona?
 
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