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.

 

[wwwweb]

This is something I suspected as well which is why I started grabbing some decent ccTLD domains, however I have to admit that sales have been rather slow on even good CCTLD's.

This is the effective bet... sales are slower, renewals are higher. From an end user perspective to pay a low amount to secure such a domain it makes sense. For an investor to play this buy hold sell strategy there is much more risk, and chance of failure. It really depends if you want to work for less than minimum wage, otherwise it comes down to luck and catching a good sale in a cctld, downside is this over enthusiasm gets put into other names that eat the profits of that original sale, and eventually end up dropping.

 

[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.

 

[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.)

 

[MapleDots]

It seems like your main argument is nobody likes Trump

No that is only a small part of the equation but it certainly adding fuel to the fire.

 

[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.

 

[wwwweb]

.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.

.

Personally I like .uk over .co.uk, but I guess in time we will see if the shorter grandson can overtake their grandfathered .co.uk

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

So for full disclosure was that a English domain, or a Dutch domain, whereas extensions have different valuations to matching keyword given then corresponding language of that region.

It’s a numbers game also, Netherlands has a population of 17M people, USA approx 350M people.

 

[maksimfa]

Show attachment 104853


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.

Can't take you seriously if you believe .com has anything to do with Trump.

The only reason country code TLDs are doing well is because the .com version of that name is already taken.

Ask any company stuck with a .RU, .CA, etc if they would rather have a .com or their own .tld.

Until people prefer to get their cctld WHILE the .com is avail... .com is plenty safe.

 

[Kate]

While we are talking about .nl it has a high penetration rate with 5.8M registrations, which is not bad for a small country of 17M people.
https://www.sidn.nl/
If .us was as popular it would be nearly as big as .com today.

 

[Domain Realty]

Show attachment 104853


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.

Well i think .com still hold a lot of promise. Country code may help local businesses but .com are still the main choice for people starting online businesses. Hack and gtld are also increasing in adoption but will still take some time for mass adoption.

 

[branding]

Personally I like .uk over .co.uk, but I guess I eve time we will see if the shorter grandson can overtake their grandfathered .co.uk


So for full disclosure was that a English domain, or a Dutch domain, whereas extensions have different valuations to matching keyword given then corresponding language of that region.

It’s a numbers game also, Netherlands has a population of 17M people, USA approx 350M people.

It's a Dutch domain. Both bought from Dutch domainers so they knew what they were selling and when I got the .com he knew I just acquired the .nl. My client asked me to get it for €100 max if I could, if not don't bother.

You're right about the numbers game. Thats basically why .com is King. As a domainer I'd pick an English domain in .com over a cctlds any day. If my target audience would be word wide though.

If I would just be needing to serve national clients I'd go for a .nl. For instance, for an end user operating nationally, online.nl would hold way more value than online.com. But if you look at it from a domainers perspective, online.com is obviously the most valuable of the two.

 

[Bob Hawkes]

if you believe .com has anything to do with Trump

I think the way the international business (non-domain) media reported the event is exactly zeroing in on that association. e.g. headline on MarketWatch: "Trump Admin Lets Verisign Boost .Com Domain Name Prices" (link) . That reminded people that while all TLDs are ICANN controlled, .com and .net are also regulated by the US government.

 

[branding]

While we are talking about .nl it has a high penetration rate with 5.8M registrations, which is not bad for a small country of 17M people.
https://www.sidn.nl/
If .us was as popular it would be nearly as big as .com today.

I know... Maybe that's because we do a lot of trade, lots of entrepreneurs etc.

Also, the .nl registry has proven to be very solid and reliable. What also helps are the low maintenance costs. Prices were high when I bought my first domains decades ago but as of now it's about $6 depending what registrar you pick.

 

[MSN-Domains]

This is a good thread. Too much is made about "owning the name in .com"

FYI both companies below are valued and listed at well over £1B in value not to mention the infamous purplebricks.co.uk

Rightmove.co.uk
Zoopla.co.uk - (Recently acquired by SilverlakeCAP for £2.2B)

Move.com - as far as i'm aware isn't even top 3 realtor in the US. The notion you need a great .com is a highly flawed argument, By all means, it's a super ancillary to a business - I don't disagree, but does it define success or failure > not even remotely.

How many billion-dollar companies have been built from scratch of acquiring premium .com names? - I would be love to see this answer if anybody has it or any examples. Everybody in the domain industry beat's this drum and tired narrative - But is there 1 single example out there to cling too? I'd love to see it...............................

I'm aware of the failure of pets.com - but are there any success stories

Zoom.us > made it too over a billion without the .com - Global player

 

[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

 

[MapleDots]

Can't take you seriously if you believe .com has anything to do with Trump.

Absolutely it does, .com is looked at as being predominantly US controlled in the world.

 

[branding]

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

Great addition! And I definitely agree that we should be worried about .com being a 'USA owned' registry.

It has proven to cause some issues in the past, as you pointed out, and I'm sure it will become a bigger issue as soon as America's influence in the world will further decline.

This goes both ways though. I'm sure if I was American and .com would be operated by a European company I wouldn't be thrilled either

 

[offthehandle]

I know on installation in both spanish and english, the language selection when made on install, has a keyboard with extended characters. So, for example a new user say a 13 year old is given a teclado/keyboard on the iPhone or Android and a .Com button on it. No .Mx, .CA, no .Global, or local cctld dedicated keys... yet.

Most growth of new users at any income level as widely known are with smart phones and internet use continues worldwide with .Com on a dedicated button. This only reinforces .Com in the mind of users. All over in Latin America, I see both the local cctlds extensions mixed with .Com, on windows, bus stops and billboards, even if a smaller company. Its a mixed bag and not dedicated solely to larger international businesses only using .com’s.

As far as investment unless you reside in .CA, as a domainer you can’t register a .CA domain without gaming the system. So, if by those standards and your suggestion that .Com is the US extension, and it’s all Trumps fault, like the news media wants to place blame, I say the U.S. Dept of Commerce rescinds all .Com domains back to U.S. registered companies and they should be assigned only to U.S. companies! That would be a good trade war move too. Hahaha.

No Canadians can register .Coms unless pay US taxes, have a physical address in the US and you pay a 250% tariff, like with Canadian Milk!. Lololololololol.....

I am just kidding around of course, just to kick over the beehive.

 

[Kingslayer]

Have you seen some recent .com sales in the news section?

Pain - $399.999
Files - $750,000
Plants - $450,000
Chicago - $1 million
Translate - $853,000
Meet - 7 figures

This is only in the last 2 weeks!

This tells me .com's are actually more in demand and prices are the up (single word .com's), part of this is because high street struggles and closures due to the online shopping boom, high streets just can't compete anymore and more and more companies are becoming online traders only and online traders with ambition of being 'the best' usually want to brand around a single word, this is why i think we are seeing lots of great dictionary word .com domains sales lately.and i can only see dictionary word .com's being more in demand and value going up in the next 1-5 years.

Majority of the world's biggest companies all use .com's.

 

[MapleDots]

Have you seen some recent .com sales in the news section?

Pain - $399.999
Files - $750,000
Plants - $450,000
Chicago - $1 million
Translate - $853,000
Meet - 7 figures

This is only in the last 2 weeks!

This tells me .com's are actually more in demand and prices are the up (single word .com's), part of this is because high street struggles and closures due to the online shopping boom, high streets just can't compete anymore and more and more companies are becoming online traders only and online traders with ambition of being 'the best' usually want to brand around a single word, this is why i think we are seeing lots of great dictionary word .com domains sales lately.and i can only see dictionary word .com's being more in demand and value going up in the next 1-5 years.

Majority of the world's biggest companies all use .com's.

I am not talking about domain value, I did mention the value of .com's still being the highest.

That is exactly why the shift away to more affordable ccTLD's

So if anything your are strengthening my point.

 

[atinc]

Show attachment 104853


A worldwide shift away from .com?

Could it be?

This question is very utopic/utopian.

No shifts happening..

You mentioned U.S politics may affect .com growth globally but than you are giving examples of companies who use ccTLDs..(BestBuy, HomeDepot etc.)

Ironic.

They are all U.S companies. If U.S politics can affect .com growth negatively because Verisign is an American company than what about the others you mentioned who use those ccTLD overseas?

To be clear I don't think U.S politics would affect .com growth in an ways..

Today there is only one fact; if you own a 1 word dot com domain and you own 1 word ccTLD domain or you own exact match new gTLD domain, your .com domain would cost more than the other ones.

No shifts gonna happen. But ccTLDs and new gTLDs providing new options for end users and if the .com version is taken than they can consider going with another extension which would only affect new registrations not the whole .com niche.

I think its always better to have a domain name that would not limit itself geographically. We are living in internet age and there is globalism. You can reach more people online with your product and services. But if you are only a local business than its fine.. .com and most new gTLDs do not have this problem, they can both target global audiences.

I was late into the game so I wasn't able to hand reg. 1 word .com domains but I was lucky enough to be early in new gTLD times and hand reg.ed some cool exact match domains.

 

[MapleDots]

This question is very utopic/utopian.

No shifts happening..

You mentioned U.S politics may affect .com growth globally but than you are giving examples of companies who use ccTLDs..(BestBuy, HomeDepot etc.)

Ironic.

They are all U.S companies. If U.S politics can affect .com growth negatively because Verisign is an American company than what about the others you mentioned who use those ccTLD overseas?

To be clear I don't think U.S politics would affect .com growth in an ways..

Today there is only one fact; if you own a 1 word dot com domain and you own 1 word ccTLD domain or you own exact match new gTLD domain, your .com domain would cost more than the other ones.

No shifts gonna happen. But ccTLDs and new gTLDs providing new options for end users and if the .com version is taken than they can consider going with another extension which would only affect new registrations not the whole .com niche.

I think its always better to have a domain name that would not limit itself geographically. We are living in internet age and there is globalism. You can reach more people online with your product and services. But if you are only a local business than its fine.. .com and most new gTLDs do not have this problem, they can both target global audiences.

I was late into the game so I wasn't able to hand reg. 1 word .com domains but I was lucky enough to be early in new gTLD times and hand reg.ed some cool exact match domains.

Each country has its own rules for commerce and to give an example.... if BestBuy went to China then BestBuy.cn would be the choice to go with because people can buy in local currencies. So arguing the point you are making does not make sense, BestBuy.com is one domain when they will probably eventually have BestBuy dot country code for every country they do business in. How can you even remotely argue that ccTLD's are not replacing the .com's? Each company has numerous ccTLD's to one .com!

Used to be companies would do business the old way like Apple does..... Apple.com/ca but even in that case Apple still owns the .ca and forwards it to the .com.

ccTLD's will, and already have, outgrown the .com's and anyone that does not see this is..... well.... you know..... wrong.

Remember I am not saying ccTLD's will be more valuable, I am saying they will be more plentiful and that is precisely why they will dramatically outgrow the .com's.

 

[alcy]

as someone just said.. its about being global and being big...
for as long as domains and or internet will exist.. there will always be .com... and then everything else.

 

[xynames]

OP: Do you mean outgrow as in...more and more of these extensions will be created...? Or perhaps that more and more of these extensions will be hand registered? Is either of these your definition of growth?

I’d define growth as in use of the domains, not to mention sales volume both in numbers and of course - far and away - by dollars - in use, sales volume and sales dollars, dot com remains far and away #1. If your thread title were something like “Other extensions are being created [or registered] rapidly” that would be one thing but as it stands your thread title is misleading, flat out wrong and, frankly, click bait.