How Important is TLD?

[InsanerDomainer]

As a "domainer" one of the first things you learn (it's pretty obvious really) is that .com is king. Prices of .com's go for multiples of other TLD's.

But I'm trying to figure out how important the TLD is purely for development potential. I have heard that Google is pretty much "TLD blind". If they rate your content and links highly, you will get a good page rank regardless of TLD.

Now, with .com you have a good chance of getting some type-in traffic. But I'm wondering if maybe any of the less popular TLD's, be it .net or .biz or lesser, are actually all about equal in terms of development potential. But that would mean that the thing to do, (assuming you are only going after income and not resale value) is to simply get a great generic or category killer in an extremely unpopular TLD's and develop and try to get a good pagerank. Seems too good to be true, though!

Any thoughts on this?

 

[jmcc]

It depends on where you are targeting. If your site is targeting a country with a strong ccTLD such as the UK (.uk) or Germany (.de), then the obvious choice is the ccTLD rather than .com. The .com TLD is fine globally and many companies use it as their global brand where they are selling outside their own home market. However they may well have the same domain or a variation of it in their ccTLD. The gTLDs (.biz and .info) are not generally as popular even if they are recognised. A simple rule of thumb is this: Country level markets require country code domains. Global markets require .com.

Regards...jmcc

 

[InsanerDomainer]

Good rule of thumb. I wonder though, how much having .biz would hurt a website. You wouldn't get type-in traffic, but would people not want to do business with you? If you had .us, would Google not rank you highly for users in Germany? What do you think of the idea to use a category killer in an extremely unpopular TLD?

 

[jmcc]

Good rule of thumb. I wonder though, how much having .biz would hurt a website. You wouldn't get type-in traffic, but would people not want to do business with you? If you had .us, would Google not rank you highly for users in Germany? What do you think of the idea to use a category killer in an extremely unpopular TLD?

It may not hurt a website but there would always be the problem of traffic leaking to the .com version of the site. This is what makes marketing .biz or .info sites hard. It is not really an issue of credibility but more one of recognition. People tend to think in terms of .com and .ccTLD. For example with Ireland the breakdowns of domains on Irish hosters are as follows:

.com : 107472
.ie: 103570
.net: 12387
.co.uk: 10525
.eu: 7556
.org: 6877
.info: 2767
.biz: 2203
.mobi: 744
.asia: 55


The .eu and .co.uk domains are based on detected domains. But .co.uk is higher because the UK is a natural market for Ireland. The difference between .com/.ie and .biz and .info is considerable. The .ie has around 132K domains but not all are hosted on Irish hosters. But you can see the trend at work (.com/ccTLD and then the massive fall off in numbers).

A category killer in a less used ccTLD might work in the search engines but most people may ignore it because they've never heard of the TLD and so would think that it is irrelevant. Ordinary users are not domainers. As for .us in Germany, it may well be associated with the USA and as such it has to compete with around 13 million .de domains. It would take a lot of SEO to get it well known in that market.

Regards...jmcc

 

[Watsonmor]

If you are an organization currently looking to register a new gTLD for a specific geographic area, make sure you have all the facts before you apply. If your application does not stress multi-territory cooperation for your geographic gTLD or governmental support, ICANN will likely deny your application.

 

[jmcc]

If you are an organization currently looking to register a new gTLD for a specific geographic area, make sure you have all the facts before you apply. If your application does not stress multi-territory cooperation for your geographic gTLD or governmental support, ICANN will likely deny your application.

That's a bit extreme. It is a discussion about what existing TLD is best for a website. I tend to be a bit cynical when it comes to the new gTLDs even ones with a clear geographic argument and market like .nyc and .berlin. It is very hard for a new gTLD to gain any significant market share. The .asia sTLD, which was meant to be a regional TLD for the Asian region like .eu is for the EU region, has not done well and is stuck at around 213K registrations and it is growing very slowly. There is a massive focus on country code TLDs at the moment with various countries becoming essentially ccTLD/.com markets. Even .biz and .info, when you break them down on a geographical basis are not doing well. The .net and .org TLDs are growing but they don't really grow at the same rate as the ccTLDs and .com TLD.

Regards...jmcc