How much does extension matter?

[mhdoc]

I was talking with my brother age 63 this morning and mentioned I was building a dot info site. He says "What's dot info?"

This is a guy who spends a lot of time on the internet. He reads 5-10 financial blogs regularly, shops on Amazon, etc.

I have thought for some time that people who use search to find things click on the first results without paying much if any attention to the domain name. As he said "If I want to go there again, I bookmark it."

So, I would argue that if visitors are going to find your site via search or some other way that involves clicking a link, the extension is not all that important. I think non dot com prices are discounted more than they should be.

 

[freedom30]

Did a google search for predictive data ......guess who was on top

Have a look to get the info

...not surprising, since the .com is, ta-daaa, a parked page.

The surprise is why there aren't even more . info names on top of the charts since .com seems to have more parked pages as their owners think they have a gold mine.

That gold has slipped and is slipping away as the younger generations use whatever is handy to get the name they want that is within their budget. The "strange" extensions just aren't that "strange" anymore, especially well into the 21st century...

And dot INFO is a prime example of usefulness when it's .com sibling is but a parked page...

 

[Mark]

sdsinc :tu:

Yes you can develop and even brand or try to brand yourself on Any extension ... You can be very successful doing so via SEO/Rankings. Obviously there are certain "domain hacks" that people are branding on - that work very well ... and anyone with the will or cash can get their domain ranked high no matter the extension.
But IMO ... at the end of the day People will associate the web with .com and possibly a few other extensions below that No Matter What.

A year ago or so - Overstock.com was screaming from the rooftops "Overstock.com is now O.co" ... and for the past few months there is NO mention of O.co at all from what I see or hear (It's just a redirect now I believe). In fact I was literally "LOL'ing" because of how many times they are now repeating the term "Overstock.com" over and over in the past few commercials.

I only wish I had a dollar for every time this conversation has come up

 

[DnEbook]

The thing is that many many many people are using the google search box and whatever is up on top of that will get the clicks, no matter what the extension ....true

 

[freedom30]

The thing is that many many many people are using the google search box and whatever is up on top of that will get the clicks, no matter what the extension ....true

...and that is just the way it is...and the extension is even less important with the advent of web apps that are proliferating for the more mobile technologies...

 

[Ray]

i find that .coms are most popular in the us.. however other countries the geo extension is most popular.. i believe this has something to do with the fact that all .coms are mostly english based..

as far as the .info.. i had one .info ever.. one word dictionary that i registered when it first went public.. i tried and tried and tried and could not sell that domain for the life of me.. i sold a few worthless .coms way easier.

 

[DnEbook]

The value with .info comes with development

 

[freedom30]

The value with .info comes with development

...as do all domain extensions in this, the 21st century...

 

[DnEbook]

So true ....... i mention on the recent discussion about the new namepros perhaps we should be focusing on development as well, just modified blogs for me at the moment but it's a start

 

[alien51]

These are all the same discussions we had in the past in the other thread where someone asked: "What's a .NET ???"

 

[mwzd]

Actually if you really want to put a price on 'how much an extension' matters, the current sedo .me auction would be a good indicator.

Those are top keywords, with decent reserves imo, should be a good case study.

Of course unlike the .com, the .me doesn't match all the keywords.

 

[bobbyj]

End of the day its about authority. Google want relevant authority so people use their magic search box and click on their ads. Development and backlinks and soon(if not already) social linking will be the key to the seo kingdom. I buy .infos and am proud. :P

 

[DnEbook]

These are all the same discussions we had in the past in the other thread where someone asked: "What's a .NET ???"

It's what you catch .fish in .....of course !

 

[Ben42]

This is very generic, but it's at least how I see it. If you are over 30 years of old and an American you've only heard of .com, .net and .org.

Under 30 and you've heard of a lot more.

Domainer, you've heard entirely too many.

 

[ecalc]

The value with .info comes with development

...as do all domain extensions in this, the 21st century…

Almost all. Dot com remains unique in having value without development in the subset that gets type-in traffic. Parking is a gold mine, diminishing but still producing. When that mine runs dry TLD agnosticism may make sense, not today. The value shift will be evident in empirical data such as the IDNX which currently shows these aftermarket discounts relative to dot com:

net (-73%)
org (-79%)
info (-87%)
biz (-91%)

 

[DnEbook]

Almost all. Dot com remains unique in having value without development in the subset that gets type-in traffic. Parking is a gold mine, diminishing but still producing. When that mine runs dry TLD agnosticism may make sense, not today. The value shift will be evident in empirical data such as the IDNX which currently shows these aftermarket discounts relative to dot com:

net (-73%)
org (-79%)
info (-87%)
biz (-91%)

Like all mines eventually they run dry, this is why facebook always growing popularity .....it has forwards movement

Content is king these days and website sales are on the up because of this

I think people get sick of wasting time by direct navigation and now many do the google search instead

 

[ecalc]

Like all mines eventually they run dry, this is why facebook always growing popularity .....it has forwards movement

Always is a long time. One certainty of any business enterprise is its ultimate demise. The standard cya language in Facebook's SEC S-1 IPO filing says it well: "We anticipate that our active user growth rate will decline over time as the size of our active user base increases … A number of other social networking companies that achieved early popularity have since seen their active user bases or levels of engagement decline, in some cases precipitously. There is no guarantee that we will not experience a similar erosion …"

Content is king these days and website sales are on the up because of this

Content (not Howard) has always been the king of all media. Are you saying that the website aftermarket is healthier than the raw domain aftermarket? Sedo's periodic market reports describe domain aftermarket trends. What is your data source for website sales trends?

I think people get sick of wasting time by direct navigation and now many do the google search instead

You give direct navigators too much credit. Many don't know an address bar from a search box. Example: adwords keyword tool global monthly search volume exact match [facebook.com] = 45,500,000
[www.facebook.com] = 101,000,000
Regardless of the root cause, I agree that direct navigation is shrinking.

 

[freedom30]

Almost all. Dot com remains unique in having value without development in the subset that gets type-in traffic. Parking is a gold mine, diminishing but still producing. When that mine runs dry TLD agnosticism may make sense, not today. The value shift will be evident in empirical data such as the IDNX which currently shows these aftermarket discounts relative to dot com:

net (-73%)
org (-79%)
info (-87%)
biz (-91%)

...no, not almost....ALL! The 21st century and the generations that follow in it will see to that by the atrophy of the .com extension itself and the development of the extensions available at cost-effective rates (dot com is both overrated nowadays and top heavy with overblown prices). Parking is on its way to being DOA...

Just evolution evolving, so get used to it...

 

[DnEbook]

@ecalc

surely you must agree the way flippa has taken off that the next step of a good domain is the development and that many domainers do actually wish to develop their name, plus many of the names on sedo are purchased for development.

No data as such to prove this, just observations at how the web/domaining is changing, everyone is crying out 'domaining is dead' i think some of the people saying this have seen the light and are now heading down the development path

What is better a domain name priced so high it may never sell or a domain developed into a working website bringing in some income which in turn is also creating value

 

[ecalc]

...no, not almost....ALL! The 21st century and the generations that follow in it will see to that by the atrophy of the .com extension itself and the development of the extensions available at cost-effective rates (dot com is both overrated nowadays and top heavy with overblown prices). Parking is on its way to being DOA...

Just evolution evolving, so get used to it...

Thanks for the crystal ball but I live in the present and I'm the laziest man on 3 continents. All names do not require development to produce value. If I hand reg a name, park it and earn more than reg fee, that's positive cash flow. Intrinsic value. An earner, a cash cow, a personal ATM. When the day comes that reg fee exceeds earnings, I'll be holding a zero cost meaningful keyword dot com. I can think of a worse fate. Again, thanks for looking out for me. In the meantime, I'll be in the parking lot. By the ATM.

@ecalc

surely you must agree the way flippa has taken off that the next step of a good domain is the development and that many domainers do actually wish to develop their name, plus many of the names on sedo are purchased for development.

No data as such to prove this, just observations at how the web/domaining is changing, everyone is crying out 'domaining is dead' i think some of the people saying this have seen the light and are now heading down the development path

Agree, proper development adds value. Aftermarket health is a separate issue. Absent hard data not sure if the website aftermarket is any healthier than the domain aftermarket. Macroeconomics is the elephant in the room.

What is better a domain name priced so high it may never sell or a domain developed into a working website bringing in some income which in turn is also creating value

The one with the greatest cash flow. Cheers!

 

[freedom30]

Thanks for the crystal ball...

My opinions are not a crystal ball(just my take on technoevolution and a passage of time), but if you see it as such, that's quite ok and you are welcome...