Do extensions really matter?

[Nathan]

Hey everyone,

I'm starting to think that domain extensions are starting to become irreverent. My thought process behind this is quiet simple... Search engines hunt for keywords... If your domain is insurance.com insurance.cc insurance.tk insurance.whatever the domain is going to rank just as high as it has "insurance" as the domain name... I do not believe that extensions will matter... I think it will only be a matter of time before people realise this...

For example let's take

insurance.com... Going off what you are all thinking at the moment, that domain is the best because it's the keyword that is entered into the search engines, however... insurance.net is going to rank aswell if there is a site attached to it... Going off your logic saying that insurance.net will not rank higher than .com.... That means that .co will never rank higher than a .com ... Again, I do not believe this is the case!

I believe it's only a matter of time before the industry starts to forget what the extension is... The .me is starting to take off and you even have a .com redirecting to a .me. Example DespicableMe.com redirects to Despicable.Me

I strongly believe that in a few years... that domains extensions will not matter. I believe that top level domains will rank higher than country code domains, but will rank high enough on the .com search engines, but then rank higher again on their country search engines... Ie google.cc

Thoughts?

 

[snoop]

Hey everyone,

I'm starting to think that domain extensions are starting to become irreverent. My thought process behind this is quiet simple... Search engines hunt for keywords... If your domain is insurance.com insurance.cc insurance.tk insurance.whatever the domain is going to rank just as high as it has "insurance" as the domain name... I do not believe that extensions will matter... I think it will only be a matter of time before people realise this...

For example let's take

insurance.com... Going off what you are all thinking at the moment, that domain is the best because it's the keyword that is entered into the search engines, however... insurance.net is going to rank aswell if there is a site attached to it... Going off your logic saying that insurance.net will not rank higher than .com.... That means that .co will never rank higher than a .com ... Again, I do not believe this is the case!

I believe it's only a matter of time before the industry starts to forget what the extension is... The .me is starting to take off and you even have a .com redirecting to a .me. Example DespicableMe.com redirects to Despicable.Me

I strongly believe that in a few years... that domains extensions will not matter. I believe that top level domains will rank higher than country code domains, but will rank high enough on the .com search engines, but then rank higher again on their country search engines... Ie google.cc

Thoughts?

In that case there is no point domaining, since any extension is as good as another and there will be lots more extensions coming out so you'll likely be able to get whatever keyword you want.

I would say good luck, it is something that some new tld advocates have been arguing for years, so far these predictions haven't fared well.

 

[mhdoc]

You have to consider how you will be getting the bulk of your traffic. For small AdSense type sites I agree, extension doesn't matter because it all comes from search. However, if I were starting to build a site that was going to be a big deal I would want (in the US) the dot com.

It's not quite the same, but a few years ago everyone included www on their domain names. That is going away and I see print ads, signs on trucks etc. that omit it.

 

[glaxxon]

No one denies that some other extention can out rank .com. But that will need a lot of good seo. Besides that a lot of the audience is still not aware of all the extentions. A lot of them just type in keyword.com straight into their browsers. There go so many so many potential clients and sales. Now same thing applies for a brand.

 

[snoop]

If I or another company or group cannot afford/justify the designer jeans price then I'm going with something else. I've been trying to acquire a few domains lately, but I'm getting things like $180K, $20K, high $xxxx and they are not even that great. I mainly deal w/ folks that don't do "computers and domain names", but they do significant numbers...I guess maybe that's what these folks are holding out for.

I can tell you that these people are not going to one day go, "Oh ok we're going to convince our investors to acquire your "baseball" card." Pricing w/ a lot of .com's is unrealistic. This is partly why I agree with what the OP is saying. I'm experiencing this as well with some other extensions, but whatever.

More power to those holding out.

I don't think the level of unrealistic behaviour in any different with alt extension. People price 2/3 word .com's like others price one word .mobi's etc. The average domainer is not going to price a name at auction level when they get an email inquiry, otherwise they just would have sent it to auction anyway. So the idea of "trying to acquire a few domains lately, but I'm getting things like $180K, $20K, high $xxxx and they are not even that great." is not new and is a domainer trait, not a .com trait.

The thing is though domain prices have fallen very dramatically over the last couple of years and just about everyone is now looking to sell. Frank Schilling promotes his sales site and talks about his average sale, Rick Schwartz is releasing lists of names for sale. So I do not think this is a problem that is getting worse. Domain name affordability has improved significantly.

 

[snoop]

You don't say?! You yourself talk about unrealistic pricing in other threads. You've taken some hits yourself. We all know it's a buyers market right now, but that's beside the point.

The fact that it is a "buyers market" is the point, you are talking about unaffordability as a potential reason for alt tlds doing well. In reality though the price of domain names has gone down dramatically.

If I got a group with X amount of dollars to pour into a venture and acquiring the .com is going to take up a significant amount of those funds what do you think they're going to do? They're going to tell you FU and not even flinch. They will not give a rats ass.

This domain business is small. Real world business doesn't give a flying F about domain names.

They'll probably just buy an alternate .com, there is always lots of different choices.

 

[snoop]

That's what I'm talking about. You way overprice your sh*t...see ya

Not sure I follow this.

 

[Kate]

I strongly believe that in a few years... that domains extensions will not matter. I believe that top level domains will rank higher than country code domains, but will rank high enough on the .com search engines, but then rank higher again on their country search engines... Ie google.cc

People were already saying the same stuff more than 10 years ago.
Fact is, not all Internet traffic goes through search engines.
Corporations will continue to advertise domain names in addition to doing SEO. They will still need memorable and relevant domain names. Would you advertise a .cc or .tk ?
I never would.

If you say extensions will no longer matter the same could be said about the domain itself (without extension). So let's register any crap domain and say goodbye to domaining %%-

 

[glaxxon]

It's definitely a buyers market. Those who can afford it shall get it.
If you want you can go ahead with an xyz tld and then can spend a fortune on the seo and getting it to rank.
Or you can just buy the .com and see your brand grow. No one is forcing anyone but the big guys will go along the same lines and the rest can rot.

I believe it's only a matter of time before the industry starts to forget what the extension is... The .me is starting to take off and you even have a .com redirecting to a .me. Example DespicableMe.com redirects to Despicable.Me

You answered your question yourself. Ask yourself why did they have to buy despicableMe.com? Because there brand is DespicableMe and Despicable.Me is a better domain. But they didn't wan't to loose out the traffic and potential clients that went and typed in the .com address.
So it would have been a considerable amount of people doing so.

That is why nothing can take .com's place, ever...

 

[john_karr]

.com is the KING!

 

[Nathan]

People were already saying the same stuff more than 10 years ago.
Fact is, not all Internet traffic goes through search engines.
Corporations will continue to advertise domain names in addition to doing SEO. They will still need memorable and relevant domain names. Would you advertise a .cc or .tk ?
I never would.

If you say extensions will no longer matter the same could be said about the domain itself (without extension). So let's register any crap domain and say goodbye to domaining %%-

Going off your logic... MOST companies would rather have a .com at this stage, however once the keyword domains become so high and just stupidly unaffordable they will promote whatever is easy to remember if carinsurance.cc is easier than carinsurancegetquotesonlinenow.com they would go with .cc I believe, or will start too in the next few years..

 

[DnEbook]

i believe the days of content is king are here and that whilst the domain extensionis somewhat important it seem that ongoing original regular content will be the main factor , i have a hack name .ws blog that i have basically put little time into over the last year , but today when i went to google and typed in unusual news it was at number one in my country australia , i am the first to admit i know very little about seo and site developing but there it is , i can only guess the keyword 'unusual news' has no or little competition , but i am just saying anything is possible

Unusual News is the blog in question

When i do a google search i find that .com.au appear first with .com, and sometimes .net/.biz/.tv are in the first three pages after that

But my blog seems to go against that trend ??

 

[garptrader]

I have seen .Net domains rank well but .TV more challenging. I recently acquired a .COM domain and launched a site on it in June. A month later it ranks #2 at Yahoo, page 3 of Bing and page four of Google (goal of course is page one in time). That quick ranking would never happen with .TV from my experience. Note that with some of my alt TLD sites I see search traffic from people who search for keywordkeyword.com in their browser and I have the website KeywordKeyword.TLD.

 

[denissharper]

Not at all...Google checking all links, Visitor and Content. These three things are matter in Page rank or Website reputation. I don't thin extension matter. As you defined.....I am also agree.If insurance.com not have good content and links then it might possible insurance.tk get nice position.

 

[Entrepreneur888]

Ranking..

.com is the KING!

While I Agree with you .Com is king because of the simple fact that you can always get type in traffic, I have seen many .nets and .orgs outrank .com`s.

As for the other extensions ie .cc .me .etc, whens the last time you have seen them outranking a .com.net.org for a competitive generic term?

(maybe in a rare occurrence in yahoo)(or unless you are searching for locational product or company, for instance a english company in england using google.co.uk

I suppose its all relative, but if you are trying to rank in Google.com (currently) your far better off with one of the big three. I have no proof but I highly suspect google has some type of algorithm where they value these three with +, ie maybe something like .com +3,.net +2, .org +1

or some variation of this. And I can say with certainty that .Com will always be king when it comes to the price people will pay. Too many valuable .com`s have been bought and sold to ever change this.

 

[smillikan]

opinions are flying

As a neophyte in domain world, I am somewhat at the mercy of the programmers and SEO guys I'm working with. But they don't have definitive answers to the "How much less will google love me if I have .us, .net, .info, or .co, extensions on my domain name rather than .com?

As far as I can tell, nobody really knows - does anyone have concrete evidence as opposed to personal experience?

 

[arnoldap]

The domain name extension of your website really matters a lot. Of course search engines may not be able to differentiate as there searches are keyword based. But a web surfer would definitely prefer to type the name of a site with DOT COM extension first than anything else.

 

[InternetMoney]

If the extension doesn’t matter much, there would be so many that domains would have little value. Dot com's would plunge in value. Only a small number of one word domains with each extension would have some value. Good for some and bad for many of us that own domains.

The reason dot com's have great value over others is that it is the top domain. It has credibility as a premium site. Would you first check out a web site with .com or .whatever ? Some will only link a dot com on their site and not bother checking out the other domains. Others look like and are usually foriegn country domains so many won't bother checking it or they fear it may have a virus or a scam of some kind. But country domains have value in their country. A dot biz sounds to me like a scam "bizness". Credibility is worth a lot of money.

 

[garptrader]

I more often find companies will register three-word .COM domains which hardly make sense and prefer to spend a fortune on link-building or Adwords to generate traffic than spend money in the aftermarket for a decent domain in any TLD relevant to their business.

 

[donnied79]

My best performing sites are a .biz and a .mobi
If you just want to develop a small/medium website any GTld it's the same.
But if you have a big project with $$$$$$ in advertisement you must choose the .com in the USA and the CCTld in Europe.

 

[ghoneim]

Hey everyone,

I'm starting to think that domain extensions are starting to become irreverent. My thought process behind this is quiet simple... Search engines hunt for keywords... If your domain is insurance.com insurance.cc insurance.tk insurance.whatever the domain is going to rank just as high as it has "insurance" as the domain name... I do not believe that extensions will matter... I think it will only be a matter of time before people realise this...

For example let's take

insurance.com... Going off what you are all thinking at the moment, that domain is the best because it's the keyword that is entered into the search engines, however... insurance.net is going to rank aswell if there is a site attached to it... Going off your logic saying that insurance.net will not rank higher than .com.... That means that .co will never rank higher than a .com ... Again, I do not believe this is the case!

I believe it's only a matter of time before the industry starts to forget what the extension is... The .me is starting to take off and you even have a .com redirecting to a .me. Example DespicableMe.com redirects to Despicable.Me

I strongly believe that in a few years... that domains extensions will not matter. I believe that top level domains will rank higher than country code domains, but will rank high enough on the .com search engines, but then rank higher again on their country search engines... Ie google.cc

Thoughts?

If what you say is true, how the heck I could not sell my customer.im or any of my other .im domanis for pennies?!

Almost all my portfolio consists of one word ccTLd domains. However, I never get any offer except a $15 for Advertisers.tel through this forum, which I did not even bother to respond to!

 

[realtimeregister]

Hi Nathan,

I agree with your point of view. With more and more ccTLD's becoming available to the public the importance of the extension becomes less.

Few months ago i regged a 5 letter .BE for a friend of mine for his new startup company in the USA. The reg fee was 6 Dollars and he is happy he has a short domain name and his customers never ask what .BE stands for.

But still good money can be made with domaining.
onlineshop-fuer-kleidung.de sold for over 14k USD according to Sedo last week

 

[smillikan]

our demographic ~

The four or so websites that I will initially have are music related; my guess is that for wedding music, the surfers will be a bit less discerning than they might be for some other products. For this reason, it seems to me .net at least should not scare anyone off - as was just posted, an unwieldy domain name would do that more than .net. For other less 'trusted' extensions, maybe it swings a bit more - but for .net I'm comfortable with a couple domains I've purchased, since the domain name is more pleasant.

 

[gpmgroup]

My Guess is more extensions makes the extension more important not less. Semantic meaning will become increasingly important. No meaning between the extension and the domain name will equal no interest.

Even if there are hundreds of extensions only a few will be truly desired.