discuss How I Predict Which Extension Is King

[Business Brands]

When
Google.com Amazon.com eBay.com Walmart.com Tesla.com
become
Google.co Amazon.co eBay.co Walmart.co Tesla.co
...I will start considering investing in .co

 

[cooljub]

Those are defensive registrations, which if used at all will probably redirect to the .com

.. which kinda answers any question in your title.

 

[Business Brands]

Those are defensive registrations, which if used at all will probably redirect to the .com

.. which kinda answers any question in your title.

Some people believe .co and .io is as good as .com
I'm dissolving their misperception.

 

[kor]

The companies you mentioned were waiting for you to invest in .co

What a ridiculous topic...

 

[VadimK]

The companies you mentioned were waiting for you to invest in .co

What a ridiculous topic...

And of course, to offer it to them. I would be mailing them day and night, calling too.

 

[Business Brands]

And of course, to offer it to them. I would be mailing them day and night, calling too.

You are not following the industry trends, it seems.

 

[MKA]

.com isn't going away. I was around during the .co hype, when speculators thought companies would move to .co from .com because it's shorter and co is a common abbreviation of "company."

The "problem" is that .com is so integrated with commercial professionalism and the Internet experience that we're thrown off when we don't see it in the address to a website. There's no reason for anyone who uses a .com to move away from it, and because all the corporate giants are using it it will be the go-to for newer businesses to establish themselves on the market.

Domainers love the idea of a new TLD taking off, because it's effectively a reset where they can apply their expertise and catch the good ones, but it's not going to happen. Even China couldn't get away from the .com, and only 1% of the Chinese population speak English.

 

[bmugford]

.com isn't going away. I was around during the .co hype, when speculators thought companies would move to .co from .com because it's shorter and co is a common abbreviation of "company."

The "problem" is that .com is so integrated with commercial professionalism and the Internet experience that we're thrown off when we don't see it in the address to a website. There's no reason for anyone who uses a .com to move away from it, and because all the corporate giants are using it it will be the go-to for newer businesses to establish themselves on the market.

Domainers love the idea of a new TLD taking off, because it's effectively a reset where they can apply their expertise and catch the good ones, but it's not going to happen. Even China couldn't get away from the .com, and only 1% of the Chinese population speak English.

More websites launch on .COM every day than any other extension, so it is not giving up its lead.

However, it doesn't mean there is not value in other extensions as well.

Brad

 

[Keith]

You are not following the industry trends, it seems.

The better observation is, you must be new to domains. Research and understanding are key.

All the best!

 

[MKA]

However, it doesn't mean there is not value in other extensions as well.

Of course there's value to other TLD:s it's just that it's not comparable.

Whether you're going to use a domain for a website or an email address, it's important for that domain to convey trust. And for a lot of people .com is the only gTLD that does that.

 

[Ostrados]

How I Predict Which Extension Is King

Simple, this is how:
.com

Believe me

 

[ontiscal]

I don't have the certainty of everyone else, but if google will use the .co instead of the .com be sure that all the .co will already be taken!

 

[Chieff]

You mean some huge companies using the .co extensions so its in trend ?

Established firms use those domain extensions as a additional domain name ; a nice to have kind of domain

 

[BetoWH7]

.co is meant for the Colombia country isn't it ??

 

[Daniel Owens]

A lot of companies start off each day with .com so it will remain the leader.
But, that doesn't mean other extensions don't have potential value.
I just think we should be careful thinking that .CO would replace .com.

 

[Daniel Owens]

Get this 3L .co $100 to $300 for most random letters. Three letter .com $10,000 or more for random letters. Dictionary .co many are $100 or so, dictionary .com's often a few thousand or even over $100,000. That gives an idea of .com vs. .co

 

[kor]

Dictionary .co many are $100 or so

Find me an Oxford dictionary .co domain name for $100 and I'll give you extra $100 for your finding.

 

[Daniel Owens]

Find me an Oxford dictionary .co domain name for $100 and I'll give you extra $100 for your finding.

You can go hand-reg a barrel load yourself no need for me.

 

[kor]

You can go hand-reg a barrel load yourself no need for me.

I don't think dictionary words can be hand-registered among about 5 million registered .co domains.

 

[jmcc]

I don't think dictionary words can be hand-registered among about 5 million registered .co domains.

The problem is that no statistics on .co registrations have been published by the registry for years. The English version of the registry gives a figure of 2.2 million for 2018.

Regards...jmcc

 

[Andreas B.]

When
Google.com Amazon.com eBay.com Walmart.com Tesla.com
become
Google.co Amazon.co eBay.co Walmart.co Tesla.co
...I will start considering investing in .co

Mostly (90%) agree.

You should not let out of your eyes a few extensions for niche industries out, however...

 

[jmcc]

As Cooljub pointed out about, these are brand protection registrations. Most large brand will register their main brand in the gTLDs and in ccTLDs. They also may use the ccTLD version of the brand when targeting the ccTLD's country. This is just good marketing. The way to identify "good" TLDs for possible investment is to examine how many actively developed website there are in the TLD and how it covers its market. A TLD needs more Mom and Pop websites from small businesses than it needs big brand operators like Google etc. Small businesses using a TLD means that it is being used by its target market.

Focusing on metrics such as domain name registration numbers or the availability of dictionary domain names is a great way to lose money. Some of the new gTLD registries decided to heavily discount the registration fees (often reducing them to $1 or less). That destroyed web development in those gTLDs and fulled them with webspam. In March 2018, the .LOAN had approximately 2,000,000 registrations. In March 2023, approximately 2,200 of those domain names were still in the zone file. The rest had all been deleted. As for dictionary domain names outside .COM, only a small percentage of those are viable for end users. They will be hard to sell because businesses want brandables more than they want generics. Generic domain names are harder to defend in terms of getting a trademark. A made-up domain name is often easier to defend. And what happens when the language of the TLD's market isn't English?

The .COM is the largest TLD. This is for historical reasons and also because of it being the de facto ccTLD for the USA. (There is a .US which is the official US ccTLD but it has 1.81M registrations.) At a country level, especially where there is a strong ccTLD, the .COM is often the second choice TLD with the ccTLD being the first. There will be more ccTLD registrations in some countries than .COM and the bulk of the .COM registrations will be historical (not registered in the last year). Globally, the .COM is king and it is also .the king in the US market. Beyond that, things get more complicated. Domainers applying .COM rules to investing in ccTLDs generally lose money.

Regards...jmcc

 

[Business Brands]

Mostly (90%) agree.

You should not let out of your eyes a few extensions for niche industries out, however...

.co is the new .biz to me

 

[Peter45]

The way to identify "good" TLDs for possible investment is to examine how many actively developed website there are in the TLD and how it covers its market. A TLD needs more Mom and Pop websites from small businesses than it needs big brand operators like Google etc. Small businesses using a TLD means that it is being used by its target market.

Focusing on metrics such as domain name registration numbers or the availability of dictionary domain names is a great way to lose money.

Great point, thanks jmcc

the question is how to implement it: one can easily learn how many registrations there are for a specific TLD, but how can one - roughly - assess how many actively developed websites there are in that TLD?
or which one between two TLDs has more actively developed websites?
Are there any indicia that could be of help?

 

[jmcc]

Great point, thanks jmcc

the question is how to implement it: one can easily learn how many registrations there are for a specific TLD, but how can one - roughly - assess how many actively developed websites there are in that TLD?
or which one between two TLDs has more actively developed websites?
Are there any indicia that could be of help?

It is one of the most difficult things to do with gTLDs because many of them have multiple country-level markets. The .COM may appear to be a global TLD but that's just the tip of the iceberg. The .COM, as with most large gTLDs, is a composite market of a global market and many country level markets. The development/web usage rates of domain names from those countries reflect the economic conditions of the market. The largest player in .COM is the US market so web usage for US registrations tends to be quite good. The .COM is effectively the US country code TLD (it has .US as the official one but that's at about 1.9 million registrations).

For a large gTLD, the way that web usage is measured is sample based. A sample of domain names is taken (typically over 100K but I use 150K) and the usage of websites on these domain names is broken down by categories. The most basic are:

No site/no response
Active
Holding pages
Not found/forbidden
PPC parked
Sales
Affiliate landers
Compromised
Redirects

It is possible to break these down into simpler categories:
No content
Active
Templated content
Redirects

I run web usage surveys each month but only run large surveys on the new gTLDs every few months. The last major new gTLD survey was from October with full surveys for all new gTLDs with less than 500K registrations and 150K samples for those with more than 500K registrations. I've been working on adding them to the site. The 150K surveys for COM/NET/ORG/BIZ/INFO/MOBI/ASIA and some ccTLDs will also be added in the next two weeks.

Accurately measuring usage is extremely difficult. The claims put out by CENTR (the European ccTLD registry organisation) about usage in their ccTLDs and gTLDs is unreliable and based on simplistic methodology. The usage rate for .COM is approximately 30% but the .COM is a high quality gTLD. The ccTLDs are different because they have geographically concentrated markets and can have usage rates over 30%. The usage on other gTLDs varies and some of the new gTLDs have very low usage rates.

The web usage is only part of how a TLD's performance is measured. The renewal rate is also important. Some new gTLDs, the ones with very heavily discounted registration fees, can see over 80% of domain names in a zone deleted in a year. Others TLDs will have much better performance with over 30% renewing but the main gTLDs tend to have over 50% renewal for the first year. The blended renewal rate is based on all domain names renewing/deleting in a month and can be estimated from the ICANN registrar reports with the simple formula (renewals/(renewals+deletions)*100. Some of the main gTLDs have blended renewal rates over 70%. That's similar to many of the strong ccTLDs.

With the advent of freely available AI services, it is going to get a lot more difficult to measure web usage because it will be used to generate websites that will appear to be real websites.

Regards...jmcc