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

[bhartzer]

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.

 

[namerav]

If renewal price drops to around $100-150, this extension will be great for end users.

 

[Name Trader]

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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

I agree Brad with everything you have said above. But at least the one saving grace is they are probably making about $3k on each car they sell. So. In most cases they can afford it, even if they are making less or selling only a few cars. I thought the change in URL was pretty good too. ArizonaUsedCars.com > Arizona.Cars is much more memorable and shorter, IMHO. And it's getting traffic. I wonder if they are losing traffic to ArizonaCars.com (which might have been a cheaper option for them, seeing as it's for sale at GoDaddy).

 

[1Darko]

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.

That was exctly what I was thinking. I would only add that an investment for a new car dealership (green field investment) is calculated at least for 30+ years. This results in an opportunistic 90k+ renewal fee for a .car domain. I think the math here is clear!

 

[1Darko]

I don't think a .cars could survive with just car dealers unless they charged a hefty premium or car enthusiasts used it as well. I have a strong automotive background, I used to run a Mercedes-Benz franchise and in my opinion car dealerships are declining. If the current trend continues it will become like gas stations, the numbers decline almost every year.

Exactly! This is happenig because the profits are shifting from dealerships to the manufacturers.

 

[1Darko]

If the dot cars extension was $20-50 to buy and renew each year ever car car retailer would be using a dot cars gtld

But as good as the extension is the price is restricting sales and always will do at current pricing structure

But dot cars is a great gtld for anyone with that sells cars with a few quid that can see its potential

As domainers we are always evaluating our domains - What makes your domain so valuable in comparison to other domains? The same thinking should be applied if we compare extensions - What makes the extension .car so valuable in comparison to other extensions? Is it worth the 3k renewal per year in comparson to $10 renewal per year? Imagine you can feed the .com for 300 years with one payment of 3k.

 

[1Darko]

Renewal fee or domain price isn't important for industries that sell high priced items like car. As written in a previous post, they pay for TV ads too. High renewal fee shouldn't be a problem. Assume you are making $500k sales daily (10 cars, 50k each), then think about the "high" renewal fees again. "high" is a relative term

Renewal fee of 3k per year is always a topic! You have to count the profit per car not the revenue.

 

[Name Trader]

Renewal fee of 3k per year is always a topic! You have to count the profit per car not the revenue.

That's what I'm having a hard time to get my head around. How much profit would a $20k car sale generate for the seller? I only went to Arizona.Cars after I posted my comments above. I assumed because of them using Arizona.Cars they would be an Arizona-wide car dealership. But their website looks like a smallish 1 lot used car dealership. Which is probably correct since they were called ArizonaUsedCars.com before the rebranding. They also own MesaCars.com which is forwarded to Arizona.Cars. Personally, I think, since they are based only in Mesa, I think that would be the perfect domain for them to use. Visitors to Arizona.Cars would be expected to see an Arizona-wide franchise, IMHO. I don't know how far a customer is prepared to travel to buy a used car in Arizona. Perhaps they might only be interested in travelling a short distance. Which would make MesaCars.com preferable to Arizona.Cars, IMHO. And as others have said, they could buy ArizonaCars.com at GoDaddy and either forward Mesa to Arizona or visa versa. And save a bundle on Arizona.Cars registrations.

 

[1Darko]

That's what I'm having a hard time to get my head around. How much profit would a $20k car sale generate for the seller? I only went to Arizona.Cars after I posted my comments above. I assumed because of them using Arizona.Cars they would be an Arizona-wide car dealership. But their website looks like a smallish 1 lot used car dealership. Which is probably correct since the were called ArizonaUsedCars.com before the rebranding. They also own MesaCars.com which is forwarded to Arizona.Cars. Personally, I think, since they are based only in Mesa, I think that would be the perfect domain for them to use. Visitors to Arizona.Cars would be expected to see an Arizona-wide franchise, IMHO. I don't know if how far a customer is prepared to travel to buy a used car in Arizona. Perhaps the might only be interested in only travelling a short distance. Which would make MesaCars.com preferable to Arizona.Cars, IMHO. And as others have said, they could buy ArizonaCars.com at GoDaddy and either forward Mesa to Arizona or visa versa. And save a bundle on Arizona.Cars registrations.

You're absolutely right!

 

[MR Harrist]

last week I try new TLD (.online), and the result are quite good for my Adwords campaign! CTR Increase, QS increase, CPC decrease, and convertion getting better! I think new TLD, if you combine with short or 1 words, the domain name will be amazing, and most user will click!

 

[lock]

I like the extension. I don't have any but tend to think as a car sales person rather than the dealership.

JohnSmith.cars

It says what you do. It is your lead not shared. I did sell new cars for years. Would I pay 3k for it nah. I would buy brand-suburb-cars dot com well I did just that suburbcars for the suburb I was working in and worked a treat.

 

[GoKaizen]

So true. Can we sticky this?

In the end, rarely will you find people spending extra money to put themselves in a more difficult marketing position.

 

[FolioTeam]

I believe it will be (a lot) cheaper in not so far future to register a .car/s domain.

By then, all the good names will be gone

 

[platey]

Most restaurants have original names that you can get for reg fee in .com, - https://www.google.com/search?q=Chinese+restaurant+&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-1

Don't see it at Flippa.

I see 0 .restaurant sales in Namebio/DnPrices

It's got about 27 days left in auction on flippa (talking of which etc flappa has just been bought yesterday?)

It had no bids on it when i looked at it

Starting bid was $500

Its one of those names that you could almost bid 500 with no dough lol because you know it will comfortably sell for 1000's

Don't try that lol

 

[Name Trader]

It's got about 27 days left in auction on flippa (talking of which etc flappa has just been bought yesterday?)

It had no bids on it when i looked at it

Starting bid was $500

Its one of those names that you could almost bid 500 with no dough lol because you know it will comfortably sell for 1000's

Don't try that lol

I'm waiting on my Escrow payment of $5k for an obvious restaurant name, but because it doesn't use any designation like restaurant, could be thought of as a brandable domain. But the Google search results clearly favor a restaurant.

 

[poweredbyme]

Renewal fee of 3k per year is always a topic! You have to count the profit per car not the revenue.

My guess is they should make minimum 10% or $2k per used or brand new car. Otherwise they can't afford to rent showrooms in good places of cities and car producers/distributors can't buy expensive advertisements on TV channels.
$3k per year is not big if each item you sell brings you $2k+ profit.

Fixed costs are the most critical factor for such businesses. They need to make more sales to cover fixed costs, otherwise they can't survive.

I am not saying .cars extension is guaranteed to pay back its $3k renewal fee. I am saying $3k per year isn't a big cost for car industry compared to other industries. This explains why its renewal fee is so high. Car is a high priced item.

It's obvious which domain will be more expensive:

Chicago (dot) car
or
Chicago (dot) toiletpaper.

 

[DOMAIN ILLUMINATI]

I believe it will be (a lot) cheaper in not so far future to register a .car/s domain.

By then, all the good names will be gone

Maybe, but I suppose that the renewal - fee of them will probably also be decreased (in the same ratio like a possible register - price - reduction).

 

[pablohc86]

about the wichita.cars case, i've read it from the PDF but i think that we should had a comparison with the same website on a .com if we want to say .cars is helping more than a .com

Did I miss it? or am I wrong?

 

[bhartzer]

A while back, I wrote about stl.cars, and mentioned wichita.cars in that case study, as well.
https://globerunner.com/stl-cars-case-study/

The stl.cars moved from a .COM to a .CARS.

Wichita.cars was a one-page site for a while, and then upgraded to an actual site with more pages and content. Even when Wichita.cars was a one-page site it still did fairly well in organic search.

 

[bmugford]

A while back, I wrote about stl.cars, and mentioned wichita.cars in that case study, as well.
https://globerunner.com/stl-cars-case-study/

The stl.cars moved from a .COM to a .CARS.

Wichita.cars was a one-page site for a while, and then upgraded to an actual site with more pages and content. Even when Wichita.cars was a one-page site it still did fairly well in organic search.

Yeah, from STLMotorcars.com to STL.CARS. If you really want proper testing you need the same keyword in .COM as well. ArizonaCars.com vs Arizona.Cars for example.

Also, it seems like there is other stuff going on in the background as well like re-design, SEO optimization, advertising, etc. It is not just related to the domain. This is not an A/B test.

Brad

 

[bmugford]

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

No answer to my questions?

If you answer "No" to the first question, then the study is clearly not objective.

If you answer "Yes" then one of your past case studies should have produced results that were not positive for the sponsor.

It seems way too coincidental that the case studies always show positive results for the sponsor.

Brad

 

[mr-x]

Mr Hartzer proved a .car is just as good as a .com for SEO. That's it.

Type-in traffic had nothing to do with changing extenstions but was related to radio and print advertising. Arizona.cars passed the radio test.

Arizona.cars may be an upgrade from Arizonausedcars.com but any dealer can buy arizonacars.com and capture 3% to 5% of that type-in traffic, PLUS email.

So, If you want to blow 3K a year for the prestige of owning a single word.cars, make sure you secure the matching .com .

 

[Rajnish Prasad]

May be the Geo domain + Car Or Vice-versa keyword have more relevance.

I have "CarsDE.com" which is for German Cars.

.cars have the reg fee way beyond the average and they should think of rationalizing it..

 

[platey]

I'm waiting on my Escrow payment of $5k for an obvious restaurant name, but because it doesn't use any designation like restaurant, could be thought of as a brandable domain. But the Google search results clearly favor a restaurant.

A nice payment to be waiting on

Nationality + restaurant gtlds will do well and takeaways are becoming even more popular than they already are

If a company like deliveroo adds ads to their website and uses ads to subsidise takeaway meals from £10 down to about £6 - per takeaway etc people will be ordering takeaways twice a day and no one will bother to cook again

Modern lifestyles almost haven't got enough time to cook because time cooking is time a person could be spending online lol

 

[GoKaizen]

The author of this study uses .COM for his websites.

That tells you everything you need to know.

 

[DOMAIN ILLUMINATI]

I believe it will be (a lot) cheaper in not so far future to register a .car/s domain.

As an addition to my comment above, just for the record (for future comparison), a today's .car/s domain's cheapest registration - / renewal - / transfer - price lays at around 2,185.00 USD in average.


Today's cheapest .car prices
Screenshot from https://tld-list.com/tld/car


Today's cheapest .cars prices
Screenshot from https://tld-list.com/tld/cars