discuss A worldwide shift away from .com

[MapleDots]

A worldwide shift away from .com?

Could it be?


I'm going to say that ccTLD's as a single entity are now the most relevant extensions period.
If you look at the UK, Germany, China, Russia, India, and Canada the ccTLD's are more widely used than the .com's.

There are a few exceptions like apple who will use apple.com/ca instead of apple.ca but the vast majority of companies like BestBuy.com will use BestBuy.ca for Canada. It absolutely shocks me at how dominant .ca is in Canada.

As the oldest extension .com's continue to have the biggest resale value but if you were to add up the sheer number of all ccTLD's they would easily surpass .com registrations.

So because each country code is unique the ccTLD's can never have the same numbers of registrations as the .com's but if you were to consider all the ccTLD's as one extension they would comfortably surpass .com registrations.

I think the trend of ccTLD's will continue on an upward scale, I think .com has plateaued and will only see nominal growth moving forward. ccTLD's will continue to grow as each countries economy grows and becomes more connected.

As a Canadian, when I do a google search I don't even look at .com's because I want to shop in Canadian dollars and same goes for people from Russia, China, UK etc.

As the Trumps of the world alienate other countries you will see more of a shift away from .com as other countries try to distance themselves from the USA.

Take Canada as a for instance.... the greatest ally the USA has ever had and Trump blew off Canadians as if they were yesterday's news, slapping tariffs on their goods and basically saying very inappropriate things about their leader. By comparisons other countries have been very reserved to bring any criticisms towards the USA. It is undeniable though that the populations of each country are feeling more and more alienated by the usa and because .com is perceived as being dominantly U.S. the entire future of the extension will see limited growth as other countries bring in protective measures for their economies.

So I personally think the future growth of the .com industry is directly linked to how open the US economy is. With Tariffs on other countries there will be repercussions and the .com's will slowly start to erode as other countries shy away from anything that could even remotely be considered american.

Please try to keep this a civil discussion and understand that you cannot look at the .com from yesterday, we are looking at times that are very different where most countries are looking seriously at protecting their own economies by asking the population to shop local products. A .com will NEVER be a local address unless it is in the USA.

In closing..... it is entirely feasible that another extension like .global could eventually become the new international extension for companies as the world distances itself from the USA. Will it be .global, .international, .business etc.... that is anyone's guess but I can tell you for sure, a lot of companies will second guess relying on a .com for local commerce.

 

[Recons.Com]

Any company that has a global ambition, or even a regional trans-border, should have their matching .com

Unless, it is a mom and pop shop in a small town, most companies hope some day to go places.

The OP treats cctlds as single entity, while it is not true and just shows the power of .com that it has to be compared cumulatively to ALL cctlds or ALL gtlds or ALL other extensions together for comparison even to make sense.

You can have just one .com, something like purple.com, and make a statement to the whole world, while if you go cctld route, you'd have to try to obtain 200+ names like purple.ca, purple.us, purple.ru, purple.de etc.

This is why .com premium names fetch the prices they do at the rates they do.

 

[Bob Hawkes]

I know some on NPs dispute their methodology, but W3Techs do provide open access web use statistics based on a long term. They explain their methodology on their site.

It is hard to read detail but the dominance of .com is pretty clear with just over 46% of the actual web traffic now from .com websites. That has gone down slightly (from a high of 55%) in last 9 years. As I read it I don't see any evidence of recent decrease due to current political and trade isolationism climate, in fact the decline seems to have stopped. Now it could be argued that what happens in world economy and politics today will only show up at some future date.

Bob

ps Because of the methodology base in 10 million most visited aggregate sites, this data does not argue that cc can be very important in local markets.

 

[xynames]

Dot com is still king. Over 90% of companies still use dot com versus any other extension.

I think OP has made a very thoughtful post but some of what he posted is offered as fact when it is rather mere opinion. Also as recons.com pointed out - OP’s facts are skewed. The OP’s post makes it seem like the country specific extensions are overtaking dot com in individual countries - this is not the case. As recons.com alludes, Dot com remains #1 in each country the OP listed - it’s only perhaps when considering all the listed countries together that it may appear that dot com is not #1.

OP mentions Canada. I recently sold a domain dot com of course for high five figures to a Canadian company that paid...reg fee (just some months prior to buying my domain) for the exact same domain in dot ca. In case that wasn’t clear...they paid basically nothing for the dot ca and just a few months later still viewed it as mandatory that they spend high five figures for the dot com. Those are high five US dollars not Canadian by the way.

 

[Kate]

Your original post seems based more on anecdotal evidence, opinion, and theoretical speculation of what might happen. Do have any hard data to back up your assertions?

Some stats from Centr: https://stats.centr.org/stats/global
PDF report: https://www.centr.org/library/library/statistics-report/centrstats-global-tld-report-2018-3.html

It would take me just minutes to come up with a 100 European companies using a ccTLD with the .com being available at reg fee. Why would a German contractor care about the .com? A .de works better. Even a hyphenated .de would work better. For them a .com is worthless but they would probably pay decent money for the .de.

It's true, a lot of names registered in ccTLDs are available in .com.
They may be nice to have, but still would remain unregistered. Many small businesses operate nationally or locally, and don't feel like they need to secure the .com.

If you take for example Dutch or Polish names. They are valuable in their respective extensions but could be worth nothing in .com. I mean it.
Dutch names are valuable in .nl and to some extent in .be. Not in other extensions, because Dutch is hardly spoken outside these countries. Same for Polish, it's spoken in Poland mainly and so does not need a global (foreign) extension.
The last time I went to the Netherlands I saw .nl everywhere. If I remember correctly I saw just one .eu, one .org and three .com. And it was multinational companies like ING or Philips.

But for international languages like English and to some extent Spanish, French etc .com has more appeal.

Europe in particular has strong extensions, and people are more likely to favor their ccTLD over .com because the proximity is implied.
When you are a big company, it's a different story. .com is more or less required to serve your international ambitions. Personally I have seldom set up businesses without securing the .com because you never know

 

[Kate]

Yes, there has been a worldwide shift. It started at the turn of the 21st century and while .com has continued to grow its relative market share has been steadily declining to ccTLDs.

It's one reason why I have always said nTLDs are doomed. The most obvious alternative to .com is your national extension. ccTLDs have unique relevance. Sorry, but those random strings do not appeal to end users most of the time, especially in markets that are not English-speaking
CcTLDs are also a natural alternative to .com for end users because there is better availability of domain names than in .com.

However: it's important to emphasize that not all ccTLDs are thriving, in fact a lot are struggling and still in embryonic state (especially Africa). Europe has strong extensions, but even there the situation varies a lot from country to country.
It is also important to note that even in countries that have a strong extension, for example Canada or the UK, .com remains widespread alongside.
Ironically, in the case of Canada the prevalence of .com is dictated by the importance of commerce with the southern neighbor (or neighbour in proper Canadian English )

The US is an anomaly, as it is pretty much the only major country that does not have a solid ccTLD, due to historical reasons and dilution (I can explain that in more detail later).

But I don't think the political climate has any direct impact on .com, even if .com sounds American to non-Americans.
Simply put, there are opportunities in both. I am strong advocate of mature ccTLDs, but also a .com investor.

When you want to penetrate a foreign market, using the local extension is not only recommended, it may be a requirement more or less.
The major companies like Google or Facebook etc have localized versions of their websites using ccTLDs.
For example when you type google.com you are usually redirect to google.cctld.

If you live in America, yes .com is king. If you do business in other parts of the world, you need to change outlook. You need to factor ccTLDs and localization into your branding as well.

 

[Bob Hawkes]

A lot to think about in @MapleDotspost. There is no doubt that country codes will continue to be strong and in some regions the dominant and preferred choice. As I compute it from the most recent CENTR report country code domains in total account for 152 million registrations. Their role in actual web use is probably even a bit more as I suspect there is far more speculation in .com and ngTLDs than in ccTLDs. The .de has more registrations than .net, the .uk has more than .org (slightly in both cases).

I had wondered whether a more isolationist USA might hurt continued global acceptance of .com. I think the Verisign saga, much more than the actual impact of the proposed price increases, has perhaps changed things because it has emphasized that .com is controlled (as well as by ICANN) by a US company under terms decided by the US Dept. of Commerce. I agree in many parts of the world that association is a definite negative. I think the splitting off of .org will in long run be very good for that extension, and I see bright prospects for .org as an extension.

Surveys show that citizens generally trust their own country code more than .com/.net (not in the US and not in some other important regions). The data actually supports that with abuse much lower in .org and in the strong country codes than in .com/.net.

There is no functional reason why .com should be so much more highly valued. - by that I mean that technically one extension is the same as another, and Google claim at least the extension does not impact SEO. So the high value placed on .com is largely a legacy of that is how it has always been, and it is valued simply because it is expensive to acquire. They have prestige because they are difficult to acquire (at least the very good ones).

Will that change? I am not sure. Many have huge investments dependent on it not changing. The long persistence of .com shows no real signs of changing. The growth has been strong over the past 12 months. Most of the major sales continue to be in .com. But I agree that the current state of world politics is probably not good for .com in most of the world outside the US. Will that matter?

Bob

 

[bmugford]

I don't see any shift from .COM.

The stats according to NameBio -

Last 5 years -

.COM sales -
298.7K total sales
$499.1M dollar volume

All ccTLD sales -
25.9K total sales
$58.7M dollar volume

All ccTLD are 8.6% of total sales of .COM.
All ccTLD are 11.7% of dollar volume of .COM.

2018 -

.COM sales -
66.7K total sales
$81.3M dollar volume

All ccTLD sales -
3.9K total sales
$9.3M dollar volume

All ccTLD are 5.8% of total sales of .COM.
All ccTLD are 11.4% of dollar volume of .COM.

While NameBio only reports a fraction of total sales, it is still a good statistical reference point.

The original post just seems like wishful thinking to me.

Brad

 

[garptrader]

Yes, outside the US, cctld domains give end users an easy way to avoid paying for an aftermarket domain and still find a relevant and recognized extension. However, .Com is still widely used in Europe, Mexico and as I noted in an earlier post Colombia ( ten of seventeen real estate agencies or developers in a Nov 2018 Cartagena real estate magazine were using .Com domains; the rest were .co or .com.co). This summer I received a $3000 offer on a two-word .Com domain from a business in Argentina. They were using a different keyword but a .com.ar domain. I was aiming a bit higher so no sale.

 

[wwwweb]

When you own the .com extension you never have to worry about second best.

I never want to build a business at the second best location, or with the second best construction company.

I sold a 5 figure .com keywordsystems.com, I offered them the keyword.systems for $500 they were not even interested. Silicon Valley startup who had some very nice exits previously. I gave him a quote, he made a very close counter, and submitted payment the next day. All they wanted was the .com, they said they didn’t need the gtld, surprising even for a cheap brand protection, maybe they come for it later who knows.

.com is not exclusive to the US, but many of the top countries license technologies from
the US, or sell into their spend happy Market, whereas Canadians are more spend thrift when it comes to spending their disposable income than Americans. In the .ca market you can hand reg LLL.ca’s, one very well known investor who made headlines 2 years ago for some very negative news kept the .ca aftermarket lit for many years, until the unfortunate.

As for a global online strategy I doubt many global companies are going to reshift on the bias of a one term, or maybe a president who doesn’t even finish a single term in office as the cloud continues to grow darker with all the investigations.

All I know is we all want to own the best, and not have to look back over our shoulders. Go back, and read Mind and Machines PR from 2015 when they proclaimed .com as dead, ironically the two founders who started that were kicked out of their own company a few years after, and did not go willingly.

GTLDS are not new, we heard the same buzz with .biz back in the day, .mobi etc... If you go look back, all the alt extension specultors are gone, .com investors are standing stronger than ever.

 

[UmerK]

Here's my two cents on this one.

I don't see any notable shift, CCTLDs in some countries have always been preferred .com.au and .ca are two examples I can think. I think cctlds and com are not in competition or alternatives of each other they rather go hand in hand.

Also on a side note, I have sold at least 7 Canadian .com geos in last 30 days and there's only been one reply that stated that I would be interested if its a .ca, I think that speaks of the volume of how valuable com is even in markets like Canada where cctld is widely used.

I would also like to point out that on my outbounds I notice that Canadian folks have some great category killer .coms, they seem to own .ca as well.

 

[wwwweb]

Here's my two cents on this one.

I don't see any notable shift, CCTLDs in some countries have always been preferred .com.au and .ca are two examples I can think. I think cctlds and com are not in competition or alternatives of each other they rather go hand in hand.

Also on a side note, I have sold at least 7 Canadian .com geos in last 30 days and there's only been one reply that stated that I would be interested if its a .ca, I think that speaks of the volume of how valuable com is even in markets like Canada where cctld is widely used.

I would also like to point out that on my outbounds I notice that Canadian folks have some great category killer .coms, they seem to own .ca as well.

Do you guys realize some of the best .com portfolios were owned by Canadians Kevin Hamm, Yun Ye, Frank Schilling, Garry Chernoff, Shaun Philford, Kevin Lau, etc...

If you collectively look at the quality of .com’s these guys own, or had owned it
would be in the top 10 percent of .com’s.

Names like jet.com, lawyer.com, bible.com etc...

Most Canadian companies who employ a larger base of employees need the border partner of the US to stay in business, without cross border sales into that market they are out of business.

 

[bmugford]

Hi Brad

Thanks for participating

Nobody is arguing sales numbers, I am stating domains in use, I have mentioned this a number of times in this topic but understandable it's getting a bit long to read in total.

Look at it like this....

Number of .com's in actual use (not horded)

Number of ccTLD's actually in use worldwide.

.com is losing ground fast

Resale value is only for us on namepros, a business only wants their address, they are not looking at resale value.

The majority of people here are domain investors. Reported sales are certainly relevant when it comes to that. It shows end users are still willing to pay a massive premium for .COM.

Your original post seems based more on anecdotal evidence, opinion, and theoretical speculation of what might happen. Do have any hard data to back up your assertions?

Brad

 

[Internet.Domains]

A lot to think about in @MapleDotspost. There is no doubt that country codes will continue to be strong and in some regions the dominant and preferred choice. As I compute it from the most recent CENTR report country code domains in total account for 152 million registrations. Their role in actual web use is probably even a bit more as I suspect there is far more speculation in .com and ngTLDs than in ccTLDs. The .de has more registrations than .net, the .uk has more than .org (slightly in both cases).

I had wondered whether a more isolationist USA might hurt continued global acceptance of .com. I think the Verisign saga, much more than the actual impact of the proposed price increases, has perhaps changed things because it has emphasized that .com is controlled (as well as by ICANN) by a US company under terms decided by the US Dept. of Commerce. I agree in many parts of the world that association is a definite negative. I think the splitting off of .org will in long run be very good for that extension, and I see bright prospects for .org as an extension.

Surveys show that citizens generally trust their own country code more than .com/.net (not in the US and not in some other important regions). The data actually supports that with abuse much lower in .org and in the strong country codes than in .com/.net.

There is no functional reason why .com should be so much more highly valued. - by that I mean that technically one extension is the same as another, and Google claim at least the extension does not impact SEO. So the high value placed on .com is largely a legacy of that is how it has always been, and it is valued simply because it is expensive to acquire. They have prestige because they are difficult to acquire (at least the very good ones).

Will that change? I am not sure. Many have huge investments dependent on it not changing. The long persistence of .com shows no real signs of changing. The growth has been strong over the past 12 months. Most of the major sales continue to be in .com. But I agree that the current state of world politics is probably not good for .com in most of the world outside the US. Will that matter?

Bob

To answer your closing question. There is absolutely no evidence to suggest global politics could or would have any correlation to the .com extension. Global politics has been dynamic for decades yet the .com extension remains exactly where it was, #1.

 

[imadoer]

A lot of companies will start off using thier country code. As they grow and want to go global they will try and aquire the .com not the .io not the .ca not the .frog .....THE .COM

.global wont over take .com people don't recognize .global for shit. You know what they do recognize? .COM

STOP BEING A HATER. .CA WILL NEVER BE .COM

 

[UmerK]

Really???

I have been selling geo .com's since 2000 in one way or another, with what you are implying geo .com's in Canada has better traction than .ca?

Really??? Hmm...

Would you like to share where your 7 Canadian Geo .coms are in use?

Thats like saying geo .de domains have better traction in Germany or the UK as the ccTLD.
That is not true even for a second and I can tell you that as an experienced Geo .com seller for almost 20 years.

With quite a few REALLLY? in there, I feel there's sense of superiority and sarcasm mixed. I did not imply what you said, what I said just nullifies your argument.

I have sold .COM Canadian geos and that indicates there is no notable or a sensational shift you claim there is, just because you said so I will tell you two geos I have sold in last 2 months. Calgary/wigs and Calgary/Garage/Builders

The price wasn't high but it was outbound and I made a profit, if you want I could send you invoices for them as well, I did not say they were in use or not but I SOLD them.

As far as .ca is concerned, I would only know once I experiment the market but I am quite sure I can get a lot of quality .ca geos compared to .com Canadian market geos.

 

[tonyk2000]

The current political climate is FOR SURE affecting the relationship of other countries to the USA.

Words of wisdom. DotCom registry (Verisign) U.S. location alone may (and should) force any non-U.S. business to think twice before using .com for their online needs. We never know who and why make become a subject of next sanctions imposed by U.S. Registrants located in Crimea, which territory was a part of Ukraine and now (de-facto) belongs to Russia, will be the first to confirm this. Whether each particular registrant approves, or disapproves the UA-->RU change, is irrelevant. They all had their .com domains confiscated or disabled because of the Crimea location. Also, what about Spanish company, who offered travel services to an island of Cuba (and, for the record, their customers were non-U.S. residents) - they had their .com confiscated by U.S.
Today, "buy american" slogan exists in U.S. As a matter of fact, many people outside U.S. voluntary apply exactly the opposite principle - "if it is american, do not buy it", thanks to various actions of different U.S. governments (not exclusively the current administration).
All this affects domain names in one way or another.
Recently I personally spoke to a Colombian businessman. I mean colombian (.co), located in South America, not Columbian. He has .com.co website, and .co version is unregistered. I asked him why. He was surprised that .co exists and said he is happy with .com.co. I then asked him why he did not register .com alternative just in case. His response was: "it is too american". Yes, really. And we had no language barrier (all the conversation happened in Spanish).

P.S. I am .com domainer, but I cannot deny the reality

 

[John Napoletano]

As a Canadian, when I do a google search I don't even look at .com's because I want to shop in Canadian dollars and same goes for people from Russia, China, UK etc.

It's not about .com vs .ca instead it's about better targeting the local customer and getting into search results for that country.

For example, if you only talk about America on your .com site why should your site appear in CA or UK? If you have both .com, say for America, and then write content for Canada on your .CA that makes perfect sense. It's more difficult to optimize and rank for every country on your .com. You can use subdomains or a folder structure, but after X number of pages you start to canabalize your page ranks.

Dot CA as you pointed out will trigger an immediate reaction to Canadians in PPC and SERP results who assume you are servicing the area vs US only shipping, returns, etc.

I would say it this way. The ccTLD are here to stay and they will get shorter not longer -- .com.mx vs .mx. While .com is currently the king over time the experiment on the Global TLD will continue to be challenged. Just look at what .top is doing now. I don't like .top. But China seems to like it.

 

[Vito]

It's only @Kate and a few select members that understand what I'm trying to say with my article. A lot of the commenters here are replying without reading the full topic and they are responding from a domain investors point of view whereas we represent only a small vocal group of the entire domain industry.

I have NOT said ccTLD's have higher value, I have not argued against .com's, I have not said .global is replacing .com. So it would be nice if some of the more general commenters would take the time to actually read what is being said.

I have said that ccTLD's as a group will, and probably has, outgrown the volume of registrations of the .com extension. I have said that ccTLD's (as a whole) either have, or will, displace .com as the dominant growth extension.

I understand that I am comparing all ccTLD's to one extension but it is valid comparison because the INFLUENCE of .com is losing ground to the ccTLD's as a whole.

I hope that can focus us back on to the topic as it was intended.

You seem like you are getting upset with some of the feedback you are receiving here...

Many people here are reading your thread with your crazy sounding title,
(that seems a little like clickbait like one member said)...
A worldwide shift away from .com

A very attention seeking title for sure.

I think many here are just thinking Yeah, here we go again. Another self-serving thread by a new domain member here at NP who is largely invested in a ccTLD, trying to sell everyone on his new investment in ccTLD's and talking $hit about dot com again.

ccTLD's have been around forever. Nothing has changed. Yes, They are not going to go away and as the online world gets bigger, naturally the ccTLDs will get bigger as well. Natural progression.

Saying the world is shifting away from dot com though, lol.
Well you sure got your views you wanted now! Now you have to deal with the feedback from domainers here who are not as impressed with your big purchase - red.ca, as you are.

Good luck with your sales in your domaining, just tone it down a bit if you want to be taken seriously here.

 

[Keith]

Again Keith... with all due respect

Do you know the purpose of a ccTLD and what it actually is?

Off course you will not see a .ca in Russia you will see .ru

Exactly!

You won’t see a ccTLD outside of a small pocket. Good luck marketing to some people when .com markets to the entire world.

 

[Internet.Domains]

In the U.S. most of the general public has no idea that .US exists or what country codes are.

 

[Bob Hawkes]

I think ultimately what China and India do as their economies take more and more of the world market will have the biggest impact on whether .com remains dominant. As I understand it so far in China most companies seeking global markets have stuck with .com. I think country codes will stay strong in Europe and Canada (and some other places). I think .com will always be strong. What I am less sure of is whether it will continue to be almost (not quite) as big as everything else combined.

Although his argument was based more around censorship, this article quotes the co-founder of Google that the Internet would split into two parts within 10 years, one US led and one China led. I could see a serious breakdown in global relations as possibly hastening that.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technol...predicts-china-will-cause-internet-split-two/

If I had a choice, I would personally prefer a domain extension that:

• Was not ultimately controlled by the government of any country (that rules out the generic country codes, as well as .net and .com)
• Was not operated as a for-profit business by any company (that rules out virtually all of the ngTLDs)
• Had long term promises with respect to renewal costs.
• Has the respect of the world.
• Is operated as a sort of co-operative by all of those who are invested in it (somewhat like the CIRA model)

The first two leave me with I think only a handful of ngTLDs run by nonprofits (but they are all narrowly focussed and the next two considerations on my list rule them out) and to some degree .org. I only have 2 .org in my portfolio currently, but based on how it has done in real world use in last decade, how it is managed, and sales data from last year, my New Year's Resolution is to look for niches where .org makes sense and pick up more of them.

Thanks for the informative and well argued points, everyone.

Bob

 

[Aaron.A]

.co.uk has a much higher ctr compared to .com in the UK, 70% if I'm remembering correctly.

It's been like that for a long time and will hold true for most cctlds as people shop local.

But .com is and will remain the global/default extension for most countries.

Personally, I only see .com getting stonger (along with cctlds) as 99% of the other extensions end up in our spam folders.

.

 

[branding]

Interesting read. I may look into some stats as well as you should also compare the extensions volume to the number of inhabitants when you look at a ccTLD.

As for the Netherlands. People in general don't care for .com. Sure, big companies use a .com but not owning the .com is not that big of an issue. Not owning the .nl is.

Funnily enough it's harder to obtain a good decent priced .nl than it is to acquire the matching .com.

I just finished the rebranding for a company. The .nl set me back about 2K while I got the .com for just €80

 

[karmaco]

It seems like your main argument is nobody likes Trump @MapleDots and it’s a weak argument at best. Politics is not a good argument to have regarding domains.

First of all, Trump, like all presidents, is temporary. He has zero bearing on the status, trust and recognition built into a dot com. (I will give you a thumbs up for wishful thinking though.)