IDNS - my first tiny steps!

[wot]

Finally got hooked- albeit a little late.

I am sure there are some gems out there but I think from my first foray you would need to specializ/se in areas you are familiar with.

Anyway, having a familiarity with Thai - I proceeded to check all prime potential names.
99% of the top names had aleady been taken Some as far back as 2001 - I hadn't even started in the domain biz then :td:

After a lot of searching- checking I finally found a few - my favourite is แปล.com ( XN--S3CU6F.COM )- would you believe it means translate.

A couple of tips for those interested in getting in to IDNS- I am sure the pros will tell me if I am on the wrong track.

1) Check , check and check again before registering There are plenty of translation tools out there - find the one that specializ/ses in the ones you are interested in.

2) This is the one I used for Thai translations: http://dict.longdo.org/?search=8&service= .

Very simple, type in the word you want to check then press search.

3) The search will probably come in with quite a few examples. This is where "check" comes in. In my case I went to Google.co.th (Google Thai). Check each translation by searching the term and note the number of searches- if it is under 100,000 in Thai then probably not worth it (Other languages, particularly Chinese I would think you would need a minimum of 1 million)

If available - then check overture for that particular country, another good indicator of potential.

4) Check your name at one of the IDN sellers, if it is available ( you could do this first of course) You then need to find the :
"puny code" ( XN--S3CU6F.COM ) -use this tool: http://sebi.axone.ch/idn/

( IE7 will allow users to enter their own language in to the browser, for now most will need the "puny code" to check)

Just paste in your "word" - แปล.com and if it is correct up will come the puny code.

5) If you are satisfied that the name is correct, meets the search criteria etc- then go ahead and reg it

6) You can park at a few places- I used Namedrive- very simple and effective and quick.

Check out my first attempt: www.XN--S3CU6F.COM

Don't expect much now but next year IE7 could change the whole face of the internet JMO

Good luck.

 

[thefabfive]

does anyone get any traffic from their IDN domains from international web surfers????

Yes, there is traffic to IDNs at the moment - even though a very small fraction of online users can actually access these names (because most us IE6). And most of the traffic appears to come from Europe or Asia. North American traffic (usually speculators) seems to account for only a small percentage.

Russian IDNs seem to get the most traffic, but Arabic, Japanese, and many others get traffic as well. When IE7 is widely adopted we will see the true extent of IDN traffic.

 

[111111z]

why do you think Russian IDNs get the most traffic?

what browser is popular there?

 

[thefabfive]

why do you think Russian IDNs get the most traffic?

what browser is popular there?

I'm not really sure but I think Firefox and Opera have slightly higher penetration in Russia than elsewhere.

 

[111111z]

are .Net IDN domains also good or should you stick with .Com

 

[thefabfive]

It really depends on the language and the keyword. If 'hotel.net' was available in Chinese or Japanese or nearly any language for that matter I probably would pick it up. I'd mostly likely stick to the best keywords for .net though - .com will always be king.

 

[111111z]

i registered a one charater dot net

xn--g5t.net 微.net

did i do good ???

i think i translates to minute in japanese, i think

am i correct or just way off in left field.....

 

[thefabfive]

i registered a one charater dot net

xn--g5t.net 微.net

did i do good ???

i think i translates to minute in japanese, i think

am i correct or just way off in left field.....

I do get 'minute' for 微.net in Japanese. Google.co.jp results = 17.6M (which is good), JP Ovt = 419 (very low). JP Ovt is as developed as US Ovt so scores >10,000 are good although I have regged domains ~3,000.

This domain may be more valuable as a Chinese domain as it seems to mean 'micro' in both Simplified and Traditional Chinese. Taiwan Ovt = 2846. Chinese Ovt is not working at the moment but with the population ratio of about 50:1 (China : Taiwan) you can sometimes estimate what Chinese Ovt would be (although this is not always true). The biggest thing with IDNs is to check the terms you have before registering. Make sure they are meaningful and the stats back it up.

BTW - one character in Japanese or Chinese (ie 微 ) is usually several keyboard strokes so it's not the same as a one character English domain, but still worthwhile provided it means something.

Good luck.

 

[111111z]

i grabbed all the IDN Dot Com domains from the dot com zonefile and am supprised to learn that there are over 374,000 of those registered.

Also i noticed that some have 2 -- and some have as much as 7 -------
after the xn

whats that all about??

Anyone...

 

[thefabfive]

An IDN with a dash like веб-камеры.com (web-camera.com in Russian) will have a punycode of: xn----8sbbdpd7ar1b0h.com. So you see that a '-' in the name will produce two more '-' in the punycode. Two dashes in the name (like web-cam-era.com) will have 5 dashes in the punycode. I suppose a domain that starts with 'xn-------' has 4 dashes in it.