IDN facts - By Olney

[Olney]

I'd like to clear up some things about IDN Domains which some are talking about the commercial success of IDN Domains instead of informing the NP community about exactly why IDN Domains are needed.

IDN Domains are greatly needed for countries that's language is not based on the latin language. Technology issues is what held IDN Domains back but IE which was the biggest factor in the countries not adapting IDN Domains is going to resolve the issues with the release of IE7

I'll try to answer some IDN related questions here as posted but I will try to post info on common misconceptions as I see. I'm an American SEO consultant, & web site developer fluent reading & writing in Japanese. (My reading is better than my writing but you get the point).

I'll talk about IDN Domains for the average Japanese person. I have been doing research on the internet use of Japanese since September of last year.

Except for the US most other countries was late getting on the internet. Most simple dot coms are already registered. Japan made the dot jp extension to accomodate for this but truthfully if you are Japanese there's a problem that others can't see that arises.

It might sound really hard to believe but this is said with research from native Japanese. Japanese people living in Japan can not remember ASCII domain names. This is a fact. IDN Domains allows them to type the domain in native Japanese.

Also there is the search engine (SEO) value. Any ASCII domain has about as much potential to rank for Japanese keywords because the actual native keyword is not in the domain. With IDN Domains the actual keyword (native) is there.

On Japanese blogs Japanese SEOs are noticing that the search engine algorithms are changing to boost Japanese IDNs in the rankings. Google Japan & Yahoo Japan also made IDN Domains show up properly in search results.

Japanese don't do type ins currently because the URLs are in ASCII form. They know they can't spell a lot of them correctly. A Japanese word spelled in English can be spelled multiple ways. Even the word Tokyo is actually Toukyou in Japanese if I spelled it the way I world write it. For a Japanese to go to a web site. This is the process.

They go to their bookmark of Google Japan or Yahoo! Japan. & type in the web site's name in Japanese. This exact pattern I have seen over & over every single day watching that no matter what URL I give them or site they want to go to, Japanese do it this way only because they can not remember how to spell every URL.

The advertisements in Tokyo for IDN Domains is usually stating "Finally easy to remember Domain names".
For a company this is a big issue. For users this is a big issue.

There's more & I know many will ask questions like:
But they have to switch over the encode on they keyboard.
Japanese can switch over the encode with one single button, & truthfully I switch the encode but found out they actually don't even have to. They can type in the extension the same as switching to the right Chinese characters.

I keep hearing about an IDN keyboard. Japanese use a normal keyboard just like in English. Mentally they use the English letters to type in their language but Japanese NEVER EVER PHYSICALLY SEE their own language in Roman letters.

I promote IDNs to anyone who is interested in learning about them. Many domainers have roots in other countries or see that IDN Domains is a parallel of domaining in English in multiple languages.

Will this be an instant winfall?
By no means no. I fully expected when I started registering domains that it should be at least 1 or 2 years after IE7 is released before IDN Domains are in full use. The site I created about IDN Domains gave people a chance to look over the reality of them & see if they would like to be a part of it at it's infancy. I posted on my site that NP since it has a wide range of young people has the most potential for users to "get" the concept of IDN Domains.
Sedo, NameDrive, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Yahoo & other companies see the value in them too (as far as user value).

Most info about the progress of IDN Domains will not be presented in English because most will just assume that domains in Romain letters is the standard & everyone is used to it. They might be "used" to it but can't fully function with them like a person from a country that uses Romain letters. This is a fact. Asians that are Asian American, & Asians not able to function in English are two seperate entities.


Any questions or comments just post them I'll try to answer some as I have time. I only am limited in my knowledge about the Chinese firewall thing...

 

[thefabfive]

What you got is: môney.com

I don't know how the seller could pass this off as money.com. Afternic should really be ashamed of themselves for allowing this kind of thing in the past. Hopefully you didn't pay too much for it.

But yeah, drop it as soon as possible.

 

[Olney]

This domain shouldn't ever resolve to look like Money. The browsers are trying hard to make sure that doesn't happen. This is so people won't make domains look like existing established web services & trick users into giving up private account info.

So the things you have to ask yourself is?

Do you really want to try to sell it later & have the next person going through what you did?

I'm doubting it will get traffic, as there is no way it can get typeins..

I'd suggest dropping it... No one should be able to register it after it drops because it's mixed scripts...

I assume it is worthless and wish I had posted this a sooner as I think I just renewed the damn thing.

So should I just let it expire in a year?
Also I do not know if I needed to do something different for it to resolve as I get no traffic to it and it is parked at Goldke-

Fabfive, I will send you a pm if thats ok.

Roderick

 

[thefabfive]

No one should be able to register it after it drops because it's mixed scripts...

It's not a mixed script as all the characters are latin-based, but it doesn't mean anything in any language. Therefore it is worthless. Someone might register it later, but if they do their homework and see -

1. Less than 1000 Google results
2. No Ovt

hopefully they won't.

 

[goodkarmaco]

Thanks guys.

This is a great group of people and it is good to know this niche area of domaining has such a in depth knowledge base. Also the direction from you guys is very targeted for its growth and to lay a foundataion with that vision for its future its highly admirable.

Truly appreciate your help. I do not want to mislead anyone and with that in mind and your recommendations of the name being worth zilch I have only one option.

I was going to ask if I should just lower my price for it. Now I know that I would be just passsing the buck to another domainer and bringing them the same unevitable outcome. The name is worthless.

MY domain business is based on selling value and my reputaion is so important to me.

So I will now go into Ebay and delete the name form a active auction there. I have it at buy it now for $695. Lol.

One thing is for sure.. all the guys that laughed at me in Afternic for buying such a name can thank me now for fighting about the improper way Afternic mislead people for allowing a member to list a name as such and such without any description that is is indeed a punycode name. So sometimes progress is painfull. I tryed to get Afterni- to pay me for the price of the name I spent.. but they did not see the honor in doing so.

I do take my hat off to Aftern- for changing the listing reguirements though and they are monitoring those idn listings now and not one person in the future should ever get ripped off like me.

To the guy who sells pocket torches who sold me the name. You can do one of two things. Fork over the money you stole from me or turn up the flame on one of your pocket torches and you know where you can stick it! lol

Fabfive thanks for showing me how to enable the idn language by going to my control panel. I have not done that yet but will soon. My hope is I can get my hands into this market in some small way and I will be watching your posts to learn my ropes.

Like Chinese say

Many thank yous

Roderick

 

[rhys]

Very interesting. From what you say it sounds like the Japanese internet development is slow to adapt to new things. If people in Japan are behind the curve and IDN's are not vitally important, or at least not important enough to change their browser, it could take many years before there is even a migration from IE6 to IE7.

It seems like the whole speculation behind Japanese IDN's is that when IE7 comes out, IDN usage will finally become mainstream in Japan. That's seems to be putting a lot of faith in Microsoft to make this a reality, and Microsoft does not appear to be a big supporter of IDN's.

IDN's are a reality today. They resolve and can be used already. I guess my question was is if IDN support is important to the Japanese people, how come the mainstream isn't so quick to find and embrace a browser that already supports IDNs? Firefox does have a Japanese site (http://www.mozilla-japan.org/), and Opera launched their Japanese browser three years ago. It just seems odd to me that the whole Japanese IDN scene seems to be on hold while MS gets their act together.

RJ (still looking for a good IDN market to invest)

I wanted to chime in on this particularly comment and try to provide an explanation. The reason why users don't throw out their IE6 for Firefox or Opera is inertia. There are few converters because you are asking average users of the internet to throw away trusted technology for a benefit they have yet to understand. Even if everyone traded to Firefox tomorrow, there will be few IDN domains developed for them to go to. So where is the benefit? The fact is that IE has over 90% of the market, so there will be no webdeveloper, ad agency, or major brand out there that will say, "let's get everyone to switch to IDNs!" Instead, they will continue marketing as usual and ignore IDNs until IE supports IDN. Only then will they begin to change their tune.

If you believe that 5% of households are extremely tech saavy and know the difference between IE7 and Firefox, you have to say the other 95% are closer to my own Japanese mother-in-law who only buys a Fujitsu monitor to go with her Fujitsu computer because she doesn't think anything else will work with it. Similarly, why would you use non-Microsoft browser with a Microsoft operating system on your PC?

The reason why we believe that IE7 will save the day faster is because it will be a special update for XP SP2 users. They will be given a notice about the benefits of updating their browser (chief among them security) and be given a choice before updating. The fact that MS is pro-actively pushing this update is what will drive relatively rapid adoption of IE7. After that, agencies and companies will become interested in developing IDNs and promoting them. Then consumers will become used to typing into the URL line for the first time in their lives. Then they will begin to type-in beyond the familiar yahoo.co.jp, amazon.co.jp, rakuten.jp new domains like dog.com and mortgage.jp and that is when the IDN rocket takes off. What I am trying to communicate is that the current IDN dilemma is not an issue of national character so much as it is about circumstance. The US under similar circumstances would react the same way.

Hope that helps explain the dynamic.

 

[Rubber Duck]

Well traffic levels may be depressing but with CTR currently 25-30% with PPCs typically 40-50 cents, there seems to be much scope for optimism.

 

[rhys]

Well traffic levels may be depressing but with CTR currently 25-30% with PPCs typically 40-50 cents, there seems to be much scope for optimism.

It is a question of portfolio I presume, but I agree with RD that the figures for Japan are very promising. I see 15%-20% CTR and 30 cents average. I guess this is more the norm. I wouldn't be surprised if you have a better portfolio than I do RD, which explains the difference. I wouldn't want newbies to have the wrong expectations.

 

[Rubber Duck]

It is a question of portfolio I presume, but I agree with RD that the figures for Japan are very promising. I see 15%-20% CTR and 30 cents average. I guess this is more the norm. I wouldn't be surprised if you have a better portfolio than I do RD, which explains the difference. I wouldn't want newbies to have the wrong expectations.

Much depends what you do with them. I am filtering out non-Asian traffic when quoting those figures and certainly mine were nowhere near that good just a few weeks ago. The Ad Pool is deepening so it seems to be making more sense to use Natural Keywords, rather than just trying to force something that has good bids. I don't necessarily think I have the most wonderful Japanese Portfolio, and I am not sure the figure I have quoted are high, but naturally new registrations are unlikely to meet those kinds of numbers from day one. I would, however, have killed for those figure with my old ASCII.

 

[rhys]

I am filtering out non-asian traffic too Dave and I optimize Japanese keywords. Remember because I speak Japanese I can find a proximate keyword even when the natural keyword doesn't call up ads. I have a few sites that generate $1 or $2 per click, and I have a ton that generate 5 cents or 10 cents. I suspect it is the quality of your portfolio. You should be happy with that answer!

Yes, this beats anything I was making with ASCII domains.