Should I buy a .WS domain?

[Digital DJ]

I found a ws domain on a subject I was interested in and had around 3000 exacts.

I don't really intend to sell it although it would be great, I would rather dev the site and try to make some money from ads.

 

[m-i-k-e]

You'll do better off registering a variation in a better extension. Unless you are targeting internet users from Western Samoa.

 

[Digital DJ]

The only .com I could find was MYxxxxx.com - not sure if that would be any good.

 

[m-i-k-e]

Hard to say without knowing the keyword. I'd take a variation in any tld or 'google globalized' cctld over .ws

You can also check the after market. Post in the domains wanted section. Search tdnam etc..

 

[Tippy]

My old .ws site had 4k+ uniques per month and 80%+ of the traffic was from the US.

 

[m-i-k-e]

My old .ws site had 4k+ uniques per month and 80%+ of the traffic was from the US.

Nice results. Any thoughts on how your site may have done in a different extension with maybe an additional keyword?

I wasn't meaning to say that .ws or any other extension can't work when you put time and effort in, but, I'd rather start with a base domain in an extension that is meant to target that market.

Digital DJ, If I'm putting effort into a site, I wouldn't choose a .ws, but there is an example already in this thread of it being used successfully, so I guess you'll have to weigh the pros and cons.

 

[JB Lions]

Google doesn't really care about the extension. If you take a term like christmas coloring pages, almost 50,000 exact match - http://www.google.com/search?q=chri...&aq=t&client=firefox-a&rlz=1R1GGLL_en___US388 coloring.ws is #3. You can find examples all day long of any extension ranking fine. You can take an even more competitive term like roulette and there's a .sh on page 2, a .cx on page 3 etc.

Just depends on your plans for the site.

 

[m-i-k-e]

Just because you can get sites to rank high doesn't mean that Google doesn't care about the extension. It takes a lot of work to get that .ws site up there. It has over 22,000 backlinks. TLD's are supposed to be treated equally by Google, but cctld's are not. With quality seo and links from relevant sites you can rank well, but it should take more work.

Speaking now only for me personally when I get a result from an out of country cctld, I move on to the next result, I don't click it.

 

[JB Lions]

It takes a lot of work to rank for any competitive term. The extension in most cases has nothing to do with the relevancy of any given search. That's what's most important to search engines. So if it matters, it matters very little, way down on the ladder. I'm in the U.S. and I see various extensions all the time, few examples posted above.

 

[wussadotcom]

Just because you can get sites to rank high doesn't mean that Google doesn't care about the extension. It takes a lot of work to get that .ws site up there. It has over 22,000 backlinks. TLD's are supposed to be treated equally by Google, but cctld's are not. With quality seo and links from relevant sites you can rank well, but it should take more work.

Speaking now only for me personally when I get a result from an out of country cctld, I move on to the next result, I don't click it.

I can vouch from .ws, been there before and done it, in fact .ws seems to rank really nicely on SE.