discuss .NEWS gTLD ruined by Rightside?

[Premium gTLD]

One of the most promising gTLD's should be .NEWS, but thanks to a TLD owner who isn't going to release any of the useful names, it now appears it may be one of the lamest.

Perhaps the only other TLD owner with a worse roll out of such a good extension was .WIKI who also sat on hundreds of premium names. Should this really surprise anybody? Rightside is the same company that ruined .REVIEWS by drastically over-pricing all "premium names".

According to the pre-registration searches on Name.com and GoDaddy, it appears Rightside will not release the vast majority of "blank city".NEWS domain names. And I'm not just talking about domain names like NewYork.News. They aren't releasing Lexington.News or even Bellevue.News. When they do have a small city or town that will actually be released (Sheboygan.News or Redmond.News) it runs from $125 to $500 per year for renewal!

Why is Rightside sitting on the .NEWS domain names?

If one of the goal of gTLD's is for widespread adoption, then Rightside appears to be failing miserably.

 

[Alice Wonder Miscreations]

The Internet is an engine of information, ideas and commerce, and one that’s not restrictive unnecessarily. Donuts intends to preserve that openness for all users, not operate a ‘by invitation only’ section of the Internet.

http://icannwiki.com/Donuts

Yet Another company that says one thing and then blatantly does another.

That's it, I'm writing my political representatives and asking for a commerce clause investigation of their business practices because this premium domain thing sure seems like it should be illegal to me if it isn't already, and it blatantly goes against that quote of theirs, they are being wilfully dishonest.

I don't like to get angry, they are making me extremely angry.

They really should think about the wisdom in making their customers angry.

 

[mad409]

It's what I've been saying, they are now cutting out the domainer and holding/selling names themselves, or at outrageous renewals. When it's not them selling them it's someone like 101 saying this is a premium, might be available and call us for pricing.

Sure we can grab some good names but from what I've seen recently it's mostly the ones they missed.

I keep digging deeper and spending more time searching and usually only find one now with each new release.

This will only get worse.

 

[brandnow]

.news has been turned into the new .sucks

I say we boycott it.

 

[RU]

[news] is a great keyword, but for a news related website I would choose a brandable .com.
e.g. The greatest media: buzzive.com, aplus.com

 

[Alice Wonder Miscreations]

[news] is a great keyword, but for a news related website I would choose a brandable .com.
e.g. The greatest media: buzzive.com, aplus.com

Yes but I have a suspicion that the gTLD may at some point factor into search engine ranking, and search engine ranking is extremely important to driving traffic to a site.

e.g. with similar news content, I wouldn't be surprised if in the future, hacker.news got a higher rating than hackernews.com in a news search.

I don't know what the search engines have planned, but it wouldn't surprise me if some took that philosophy.

 

[RU]

SEO is dead IMO.

Yes but I have a suspicion that the gTLD may at some point factor into search engine ranking, and search engine ranking is extremely important to driving traffic to a site.

e.g. with similar news content, I wouldn't be surprised if in the future, hacker.news got a higher rating than hackernews.com in a news search.

I don't know what the search engines have planned, but it wouldn't surprise me if some took that philosophy.

 

[RU]

The Top 4 Reasons SEO Is Dead
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/245521

 

[Alice Wonder Miscreations]

SEO is not dead, black hat SEO is dead as it should be - where content was crafted for engines rather than for the end user. But SEO itself is not dead, genuine SEO (I hate the term organic), where you make the site easy for search engines to figure out by making the site easy for users to figure out.

That's what google has been pushing for and what I suspect bing is doing to.

A .news TLD makes it easy for the user to figure out it is a news site. So I suspect sites will get ranking bonus if the TLD matches the content and get penalized if the TLD does not match the content.

TLDs that are specific in nature will do better than TLDs that are not specific in nature, all other things being equal.

hackernews.com will still rank higher than hacker.news if hacker.news is a crap site that scrapes content with nothing of its own, but all other things being equal, my suspicion is that google and friends will give it higher search ranking that similar content sites on more generic TLD.

A/B testing is probably the only way to figure if and when that is being implemented as the engines tend to not disclose full details on their algorithm because they want to avoid black hat tricks.

 

[Kate]

I feel sorry for those who thought they would be able to get great keywords at regfee... not that it won't happen but it's like trying to beat the casino at its own game.

In Icann doublespeak, new extensions are supposed to bring more choice to consumers, but in practice the registries often hoard the most desirable keywords while leaving you the crumbs. Yet I don't think that the practice should be outlawed, but it defeats the intended purpose of new extensions.

This is precisely one reason why new extensions will fail. People will shun them. They are not stupid, they know they could buy a .com on the aftermarket instead. Domains priced at low $,$$$ don't look that expensive when you are offered new strings that carry renewals in the 3-figure range...
Maybe the registries are in fact doing us a favor by driving potential customers away...

 

[Premium gTLD]

Actually Donuts has done a nice job of making money on the initial roll out with their Early Access Program that puts a decreasing premium on the names for five days and then opens them to public at reasonable rates.

The other thing I really like about Donuts is, unlike Rightside, they don't sit on very many premium names.

Rightside has an EAP program, but doesn't release many of the premium names, and the ones it does release it wants hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars to register and renew.

Donuts = good for gTLD adoption and end user business opportunities.
Rightside = not so much

 

[Premium gTLD]

.news has been turned into the new .sucks

I say we boycott it.

You may be onto something.

 

[brandnow]

I feel sorry for those who thought they would be able to get great keywords at regfee... not that it won't happen but it's like trying to beat the casino at its own game.

In Icann doublespeak, new extensions are supposed to bring more choice to consumers, but in practice the registries often hoard the most desirable keywords while leaving you the crumbs. Yet I don't think that the practice should be outlawed, but it defeats the intended purpose of new extensions.

This is precisely one reason why new extensions will fail. People will shun them. They are not stupid, they know they could buy a .com on the aftermarket instead. Domains priced at low $,$$$ don't look that expensive when you are offered new strings that carry renewals in the 3-figure range...
Maybe the registries are in fact doing us a favor by driving potential customers away...

That's why I have been saying all along that as domainers it would be best if we support registries such as .Club and .Work that got so much right. Who didn't hoard all of the best names. And who charge reasonable registration and renewal fees. We should be supporting them with our dollars. Instead of supporting registries such as .Sucks and .News who want to rip people off as much as possible.

 

[enterscope]

is news.sucks available?