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information Should Car Dealerships Use a Geo .CARS Domain Name?

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It's been a while since I have released a New TLD case study. I recently completed a 30 page case study where I looked at 3 different .CARS web sites. One moved from a .COM to a .CARS domain, the other two launched new web sites on .CARS domains.

The site that moved, ArizonaUsedCars.com, moved to Arizona.CARS. They saw a 75 percent increase in visitors from Google organic search (just by moving the site). The others have done pretty well, also.

In the PDF, I detail all of the Google Analytics data, as well as SEMrush.com search engine ranking data.

You can download the case study here.

I'd love to hear any feedback you have--positive or negative.
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
A very pricey extension, so unless the domain change is worth $2,000 to $3,000 more in profit annually, then it probably wouldn't be worth it. But at those prices you can probably get some very memorable .car or .cars names, so to some car professionals, it may be worth the extra annual expense for a more memorable or shorter domain name!
 
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I just can't take any registry sponsored "case study" seriously. There is too much of a vested interested in cherry picking results that paint a certain picture.

This is a $3K/year extension. That alone is likely to turn off 99.9% of end users.

Brad
 
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Too expensive. I see so many car ads on TV I think that's where most of their budget goes.
 
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I believe it will be (a lot) cheaper in not so far future to register a .car/s domain.
 
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I'm sure the owner could of bought ArizonaCars.com for 3k, what am i missing?
 
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I wouldn't be thinking that getting ArizonaCars.com for 3k would be that easy. But that one could get something decent for 3k in dot com, yes.

What would the registry recommend to an Arizona car dealer to use now that Arizona.Cars taken?
 
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I wouldn't be thinking that getting ArizonaCars.com for 3k would be that easy. But that one could get something decent for 3k in dot com, yes.

What would the registry recommend to an Arizona car dealer to use now that Arizona.Cars taken?
Good question - I think they would recommend him to be "creative" and most probably they would offer him some "alternatives" .

Actually it's not a must to have "arizona" in the domain just because his business is in Arizona - he simply has to write his geo - location into the meta - text of his website - so Arizona's car - searching / buying citizen will find his domain / website in the search results (that's what people do aminly, searching & clicking - not typing domains).

But of course the geo - version is clearly the premium - version which will be the first search result if others don't pay Google / ... to get place #1.
 
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It's been a while since I have released a New TLD case study. I recently completed a 30 page case study where I looked at 3 different .CARS web sites. One moved from a .COM to a .CARS domain, the other two launched new web sites on .CARS domains.

The site that moved, ArizonaUsedCars.com, moved to Arizona.CARS. They saw a 75 percent increase in visitors from Google organic search (just by moving the site). The others have done pretty well, also.

In the PDF, I detail all of the Google Analytics data, as well as SEMrush.com search engine ranking data.

You can download the case study here.

I'd love to hear any feedback you have--positive or negative.
Who sponsored this case study, or is this something you do on your own?

The issue is the $3,000 annual renewal fee for general domains, the data points you are making could be the best of 100, you only compared two, there was none that had no change, this seems like a one sided case study, I am skeptical, and tend to read between the lines at times, but one thing about data it does not lie, but I remember reading a story recently from a domainer, who is an end user also, and they chose to drop their similar niche domains as they were not making a difference, maybe the two of you should talk.
 
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If your car business plans to stay open for the next 20 years, that’d be $60k sunk into a single domain name.

Any sensible business person would be better off spending ~$10k on ArizonaCars.com, PhoenixCars.com, and other alternatives, and using the remaining $50k for advertising, marketing, or anything else.
 
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I wouldn't be thinking that getting ArizonaCars.com for 3k would be that easy. But that one could get something decent for 3k in dot com, yes.

What would the registry recommend to an Arizona car dealer to use now that Arizona.Cars taken?

It is $3K/year for a .cars, so even if the .COM was $10K that is $10K + $10/year over a decade vs $30K over a decade.

Brad
 
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Who sponsored this case study, or is this something you do on your own?

The issue is the $3,000 annual renewal fee for general domains, the data points you are making could be the best of 100, you only compared two, there was none that had no change, this seems like a one sided case study, I am skeptical, and tend to read between the lines at times, but one thing about data it does not lie, but I remember reading a story recently from a domainer, who is an end user also, and they chose to drop their similar niche domains as they were not making a difference, maybe the two of you should talk.

The problem with sponsored studies like this is basically they are only going to be released if the results are favorable to the sponsor. I doubt the registry is going to sponsor a case study then have negative results published.

That is the main issue, because it is sponsored it is hard to be seen as objective.

Were other case studies done that didn't have favorable results and not released?

The sample size in this case study is very small. Were other websites analyzed where the results were not as positive, and just ignored in the final case study?

Brad
 
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Who sponsored this case study, or is this something you do on your own?

From the article -

While this research and case study is sponsored by the .CARS TLD, in no way was our professional opinion or the data we reveal biased in one way or another.
 
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We wanted to see if a .CARS domain name is worth the $3,000 purchase price.

This should really read purchase, and annual renewal price going forward.
 
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A very pricey extension, so unless the domain change is worth $2,000 to $3,000 more in profit annually, then it probably wouldn't be worth it.
$40,000 in "free" traffic from organic search for moving to a .CARS domain. Definitely worth it, in my opinion.
 
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From the article -

While this research and case study is sponsored by the .CARS TLD, in no way was our professional opinion or the data we reveal biased in one way or another.
Yes, it was commissioned ("sponsored") by the .CARS TLD. I personally take my reputation seriously--and didn't put any bias whatsoever into this. They paid me for my time--which was about 40 hours of researching, looking at data (Google Analytics, SEMRush.com, Google Search Console data) and then writing/rewriting/updating.
 
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$40,000 in "free" traffic from organic search for moving to a .CARS domain. Definitely worth it, in my opinion.

Yes, I guess if it translates to at least one extra car sale a year, then it's paid for itself, which relying on your research seems more than plausible!

But what happens if Google decides to change their algo, which happens quite often, and sometimes without warning or reason, reducing your increased traffic, and now you're left with a $3,000 domain renewal each year? It's quite an expensive roll of the dice? Does any business really want to bet $3,000 a year on Google Search?
 
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Yes, it was commissioned ("sponsored") by the .CARS TLD. I personally take my reputation seriously--and didn't put any bias whatsoever into this. They paid me for my time--which was about 40 hours of researching, looking at data (Google Analytics, SEMRush.com, Google Search Console data) and then writing/rewriting/updating.

Would the study have still been released if the results were not favorable for the sponsor?

I know you have done several sponsored new gTLD case studies in the past.
Can you point to any of these where the final study was not favorable to the sponsor?

Brad
 
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The problem with sponsored studies like this is basically they are only going to be released if the results are favorable to the sponsor. I doubt the registry is going to sponsor a case study then have negative results published.

That is the main issue, because it is sponsored it is hard to be seen as objective.

Were other case studies done that didn't have favorable results and not released?

The sample size in this case study is very small. Were other websites analyzed where the results were not as positive, and just ignored in the final case study?

Brad

Brad, I totally understand your concern. Yes, it was sponsored. I can tell you that I was completely unbiased and I wasn't looking for one particular objective. The data is there--there are pluses and minuses. Download and read the full study and the findings.

Study the data and make your own conclusions.

As for "sample size", this was not the objective--to prove anything. Objective was to highlight a few web sites. That's all.
 
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Yes, it was commissioned ("sponsored") by the .CARS TLD. I personally take my reputation seriously--and didn't put any bias whatsoever into this. They paid me for my time--which was about 40 hours of researching, looking at data (Google Analytics, SEMRush.com, Google Search Console data) and then writing/rewriting/updating.
Fair enough, but what about your other data points, if we only took the good from every report, we would live in a totally alternate universe. There could have been different factors around the time you took those stats, maybe the Barrett Jackson car auction in Arizona... you cherry picked it, a true unbiased report has all data points.
 
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No

https://www.strategicrevenue.com/wh...o-suck-it-will-rebrand-with-king-of-all-urls/

Yes, initially I was very excited about .cars domains. Two years later, after watching what I feel has been significantly poor adoption overall, I did not want to spend another $2,100 (I did still had access to the discount) on renewing even just one of them. After two years of watching less than stellar growth, and a poor retail and wholesale market of the TLD as a whole, keep it mind, I watched Cheap.cars not even attract bids over $100.00; I decided that there was no longer any point to continue to hold the domain and build a business on it as its value and the anticipated competitive edge of having it early had diminished to me.

https://www.namepros.com/threads/wh...d-with-king-of-all-urls.1056962/#post-6496609

@clasione
 
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It's been a while since I have released a New TLD case study. I recently completed a 30 page case study where I looked at 3 different .CARS web sites. One moved from a .COM to a .CARS domain, the other two launched new web sites on .CARS domains.

....

I'd love to hear any feedback you have--positive or negative.

I've heard exactly the opposite, results not justifying the added expense.
 
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>> But what happens if Google decides to change their algo

This isn't *all* about the Google algorithm. In fact, if you read the case study, there's information about direct traffic to the sites, which can be type-ins. One site was doing iHeartMedia advertising which caused a bunch of direct traffic, type-ins and Google organic traffic to go up. Another did GeniusMonkey advertising (not organic search traffic) and also saw more direct traffic and type-ins.
 
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