.net sites that trump their .com

[labrocca]

I know that many believe that .coms are 100x better to have but I see often enough a dot net site where they own the dot com too.

http://www.mygamercard.net/

That's an example. I also own a .net started site where I later acquired the dotcom but I still run the site as a .net.

Does anyone else have sites they know that runs as the .net even though they own or just redirect the dot com?

 

[akcampbell]

From my experience of developing .coms, everything depends on search engine ranking. You can get links from high traffic sites, do radio and magazine interviews, promote your site on Twitter and Facebook, pay for traffic via Adwords, and so on but these only produce temporary spikes in traffic.

Organic search engine traffic is the lifeblood of your website. Other than the geo aspect, domain extension has no bearing on search engine ranking.

Paying a small fortune for a .com is fine if it gets alot of type in traffic but the truth is something like PetTrainers.com would get virtually no type-in traffic so the $80 .net is far better value.

Traffic bleed is hugely overblown, it's .com domainer propaganda. The truth is if you are getting enough traffic to worry about losing a tiny slice of it to the .com, you have beaten the odds, your site is ranked on the first 3 pages of all major search engines, giving 0.1% of it away won't make any difference to your business. The most important thing is holding or improving on your search engine ranking, not getting 100% rather than 99.9% of your type in traffic. Ultimately, if somebody is typing your domain in, they have probably visited your site before, and it won't take them long to correct their mistake.

If I could buy stellar keywords cheap in .net, I would buy .net. The only thing I wouldn't buy is ccTLD's because I don't want Google to rank me for the country search site only.

I bought Politics.pro for $600 today, Politics.info sold for $15,250, and Politics.net sold for $35,000. I don't understand why anybody would pay $35,000 for Politics.net, I doubt many people type it in, it's difficult to make money out of blogging about politics, aggregating political articles, or paying for content so it's a vanity project or lifestyle business at best. Best to get the cheapest, most credible, and brandable gTLD you can find.

Without a doubt, that is .pro. .org isn't commercial, .biz is shorthand text speak and lacks business credibility, .mobi is monstrously ugly, has a narrow breadth of keyword fit, and is massively overpriced for what you get, .me makes for some neat verb fits but is a lightweight unimpressive brand, .tv is brilliant for certain keywords, lame for others, .net is fine but it's expensive for blockbuster keywords and has stone age second best to .com association, .info works well for generic keywords but is out of its depth for non-generic keywords.

.com makes sense for big businesses who can afford to burn money building their online brand in the media for 1-2 years, amateur developers have to make money from the get go so they have to rely on search engine ranking. That makes domain extension redundant. Obviously, .com is best, but for most people on NamePros buying an average .com from somebody like Rick Latona for $20k is a complete waste of money.

 

[szury]

i still think .com is better.
Whenever I forgot the extension of the domain I check the .com first.

 

[bmugford]

No one is going to argue that .NET is better than .COM

The argument is the cost/benefit of .NET makes more sense in general than paying an ultra premium for the same term in .COM

Brad

i still think .com is better.
Whenever I forgot the extension of the domain I check the .com first.

 

[localexperts]

As akCampbell states, it is about ROI.

I recently purchasd several DOT NETs with existing traffic. WeddingPhotographers.net does between 1,000 and 1,500 uniques a month. Videographers.net around 1,000. TentRentals.net 500. The rest have between 100 and 200 uniques a month.

Not great, but not bad for free traffic considering market rate of $.25 per click on the open market for cheap traffic on low-competitive keywords.

 

[namewaiter]

this discussion could pertain to ANY TLD .net, .info, .pro, .tv ... couldn't it?

if the site is built and popularity achieved, then does the tld really matter? it may just cost more and be a little more difficult to get the alternate tld recognized and accepted.

 

[labrocca]

this discussion could pertain to ANY TLD .net, .info, .pro, .tv ... couldn't it?

if the site is built and popularity achieved, then does the tld really matter? it may just cost more and be a little more difficult to get the alternate tld recognized and accepted.

I don't think so. I think CNO for the most part have that trusted public awareness that you still need. And I do believe that Google and other SEs give less rank to info and biz. As stated if you have a cctld you're gonna risk being placed into a geo targetted search.

I have owned .infos and jeez...they are tough to get traffic to.

 

[bmugford]

I deal with end users frequently, and as far as I am concerned the only extensions with widespread credibility are COM/NET/ORG (where appropriate) and ccTLD.

Sure single word .INFO can sell well at times, but many end users have never even heard of .INFO/BIZ/etc.

Brad

I don't think so. I think CNO for the most part have that trusted public awareness that you still need. And I do believe that Google and other SEs give less rank to info and biz. As stated if you have a cctld you're gonna risk being placed into a geo targetted search.

I have owned .infos and jeez...they are tough to get traffic to.

 

[Steven]

I want to buy a .net (generic name) and develop it.

.com is registered in 2008 and will expire in a month 2009 (I'm not sure if the person will renew it)

Should I hold any dev plan and wait for .com to drop (if the owner decides to drop it) and just go ahead with .net dev?

 

[namewaiter]

I don't think so. I think CNO for the most part have that trusted public awareness that you still need. And I do believe that Google and other SEs give less rank to info and biz. As stated if you have a cctld you're gonna risk being placed into a geo targetted search.

I have owned .infos and jeez...they are tough to get traffic to.

but all these examples being cited are of established alternate tlds showing more popularity than their .com counterpart.

the key is being established ... i mean established is established, past the point of public awareness and acceptance.

 

[DomainTalker]

If the developed .net is more popular, it will beat a parked .com any day on the google page.

This is an interesting point...


So many of the prime keywords in .com are just parked.

Wouldn't this open the door of exceptional opportunity to the equivalent .net owner of a prime keyword? Provided the .net owner developed the name, and did all the right things to promote it, and get good ranking?


This might also argue for prime keyword .net value - if the .com is parked.....ie If the above arguments are correct (ie that traffic leakage from a developed .net to the parked .com is a minor factor, in reality), then, maybe its worth paying a solid price for a terrific .net, but, develop it well? In this case, you stand a good chance of making good money.


Sure, a deep-pockets new owner of the .com might buy it, and brand/develop/promote it - in which case, you, the .net owner, would have a fight on your hands....But, then, if your .net was already previously established with top rankings, traffic, and loyal members, whilst your leakage may increase, you still might do well long term, regardless of the .com activity?


My gut instinct increasingly tells me great keywords is the key. You can build businesses on them....Great .com keywords are best - but, any extension offers the opportunity.

.

 

[akcampbell]

And I do believe that Google and other SEs give less rank to info and biz.

This is not true. Please read this article, it's the distilled knowledge of 37 SEO experts.

http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors

If a .info or .biz doesn't rank well it's due to various factors;

1) Age of domain. It takes time to build up relevant inbound links, content and page rank.

2) Alternative extensions are usually developed by individuals rather than businesses therefore the end result is less search engine friendly. Businesses have better access to SEO advice, quality content, budgets for web site promotion, and professional developers who know what they are doing.

3) People who give links have established sites, they are probably .coms, and will be more convinced by and used to .com sites and more sceptical of alternative extension home brew.

Spain.info and Austria.info each rank number 2 for their keyword on Google behind the Wiki country page. These sites are professionally developed with excellent content. About 3-4 weeks ago I saw 2 London buses in Oxford Street, London, one in front of the other, decked out with Austria.info ads.

I looked into advertising on the side of a London bus for my website, it costs a fortune. Here are the rate cards;

http://www.cbsoutdoor.co.uk/upload/138167_672_1231930324685-BusandTram09.pdf

When you say Google doesn't rank your .info or .biz well, you have to ask yourself whether the site looks as good as Spain.info and Austria.info and if there are 2 London buses stuck in a traffic jam on the most famous shopping street in the UK with thousands of shoppers walking past looking at your ad.

An $80 .net makes alot more sense than a $20,000 .com. Likewise, a September 08 hand reg of Fund.pro is a better bet than spending $10m on Fund.com.

Another issue the seomoz.org article flags is that domain keywords don't play a major role in search engine ranking. They score a 3 and are described as moderately important. As the internet gets more congested and the first 3 pages of Google get more packed with the victors in a long SEO war, domain keywords will get less and less important.

If domain extensions have no bearing on search engine rankings and keyword value gets diluted by congestion, SEO attrition, and ICANN flooding the market with more gTLD's, domainers have a problem.

The saving grace is it will get harder to get to the top of Google and stay there. You will need an increasingly expensive combination of original content, cutting edge design, professional SEO, Adwords spend, and offline marketing. The cost of the domain will become a relatively smaller part of the total spend and effort required, and competition for top domains will continue to increase.

Alternative extension domainers should focus on value, fit, and brand. The problem with .net is it doesn't always offer great value, I gave the example of $35,000 for Politics.net when it will be very difficult to make any real money out of a politics website. .net also doesn't fit many keywords particularly well, it's an off-the-shelf fit, based on .net's historical juxtaposition to .com and .org. From a branding angle, .net is strong but I still think it is a bit Fred Flintstone, if it was on a business card I'd expect to be given it by this guy...

http://blog.ideacity.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/geek.jpg

From a branding and fit angle, I prefer Golf.pro to Golf.net and Poker.pro to Poker.net. They have more wow factor.

 

[sankalpsingh]

This one trumps the dot com extension for obvious reasons.
Asp.net

 

[localexperts]

I like .TV, .NET, and .PRO the best. .COM is #2, but .TV and .PRO are recognizable outside the netspace and .NET is closely tied to the word network (which is perfect for a lead company)

Obviously, I own YellowPages.PRO. I was very blessed to get that domain.

The only way I can take on YellowPages.com, YellowBook.com, and Superpages.com is with YellowPages.pro. The only domain in the world that makes sense.

 

[labrocca]

I just found another PERFECT example of a net trumping a com.

http://www.freeimagehosting.net

#1 G result for "free image hosting" which has a wordtracker score of 1324 which is pretty substantial. The dot com is a parked page totally crap and irrelevant. The net isn't even a fancy site. It's just not a parked page. Even a basic site can beat a dot com when it's developed. That site probably took about 30 minutes max to setup. Reg date for net is 2003 vs 2001 for com.

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/freeimagehosting.net+freeimagehosting.com/?metric=uv

According to that the percentage of leakage to the dot com is less than 2%. Really we keep hitting that 2% fairly regularly.

All this and I would be that simple dot net beats the dot com income by 10-50 times. Now that's unlocking potential.

 

[xrvel]

1. PHP.net - vs com (compete.com)
2. SourceForge.net, - vs com (compete.com)
3. SpeedTest.net - vs com (compete.com)

 

[MattheP]

Visit-x.net - Warning - adult

They own visit-x.com, but branding visit-x.net. I saw it on TV yesterday - during the opening of WBC Boxing world heavy weight championship, one of the finalist was wearing hat with visit-x.net

 

[localexperts]

Another biggie - AUTHORIZE.NET. I type in AUTHORIZE.NET every day to see our receipts. In 3+ years, I don't think I ever typed in AUTHORIZE.COM by accident.

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/authorize.net+authorize.com/?metric=uv

Even if I did, I couldn't pull up my account on the .COM, so that site owner would make zero $0 from my visit.

 

[labrocca]

Speedtest.com actually appears to be doing a substantial 6%. They must be making a ton of money. The dot com isn't indexed in Google at all..it might be banned even. That's a lot of bleed.

 

[nythemes]

the use of the word "net" is commonly used as an acronym for the word "internet", as in "i found it on the net", because it's shorter. If you have a .net site, you can incorporate this word into your tagline to help your site's extension being remembered and help associate it as an authority on the net. For Example. If you own bikes.net, you could say "the best source for bikes on the net" or something to that effect. It fits pretty particularly well with this extension, what do you think?

 

[localexperts]

I just regged (fresh reg) BATHROOMCONTRACTOR.NET.

I would hate to guess how much the DOT COM would cost in the secondary market.