IT.COM

domains Status Quo Bias Favors .com Top Level Domain, But For How Long?

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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
Thanks for the post. I think the article takes a fairly balanced look at the issue. A lot of sense in discussing fundamentally what a domain name is, and the nuances needed in deciding what option is best.

I think the comparison between the fragmented on demand video/broadcast world that led to many small specialized channels and the new gTLDs is a valid analogy that I had not considered before.

Thanks again,

Bob
 
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Perhaps a comparison can be made to toll-free numbers. Up until 1996, a 1-800 number with a meaningful keyword could be valuable (i.e. 1-800-TAXICAB is rented to taxi companies across the US). Then they introduced 1-888 and eventually several other alternatives. How many forum members are investing in 1-833 phone numbers? What has been your sales ratio? Roi on the phone # portfolio?

Toll-free phone numbers have been around for some 50+ years but how much discussion do you hear about another vanity phone extension? Look at my 1-880-keyword phone number? How much do you think it is worth?
 
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thats a good comparison, hey do you know about the 1 833 i see so many of them say in auction. did they ever have the auctions, pm me if yo can. i as after 833 geotech for a company i consult for.

page
 
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RB said:
Finding a decent domain name is nearly next to impossible if the only top-level domain extension considered is .com.
Not really. Consider the poster names above. They can all hang out their shingle today with a new hand reg law name: lolwarriorlaw.com, garptraderlaw.com, bobhawkeslaw.com, pagehowelaw.com but I'll admit my personal favorite deweycheatemandhowe is taken.
 
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Bob, In 2009 or 2010 (don't recall) I was doing some outbound and someone expressed interest in a domain - not the one I had mentioned but another one in my portfolio. He eventually bought that other name and did develop on it. It appears that years later his site no longer resolves. Since he was a developer of Spanish websites and had corresponding 1-800 numbers (some he was not using) and noticed I had equivalent domain names, he thought I might be interested. I was not interested in buying 1-800 phone numbers but presumably if he was offering 1-800 phone numbers for sale, he had at least grandfathered around any restrictions.
 
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Google.com
Facebook.com
Amazon.com
baidu.com
Twitter.com
CNN.COM
NYTimes.com
Instagram.com
YouTube.com
Alibaba.com
Linkedin.com
VK.COM
Bet365.com
Pornhub.com
iTune.com
ESPEN.COM
Foxnews.com
Godaddy.com
Reddit.com
Pinterest.com
Flickr.com
Microsoft.com
AOL.COM

Etc,etc,etc, etc.

These are the sites that controls every of our lives, and they are all using .Com. Until these sites stops using .com and starts using .whatever. Until then, .com will always have great bias in it's favor. Because, every startups would want to be like them.
 
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Not really. Consider the poster names above. They can all hang out their shingle today with a new hand reg law name: lolwarriorlaw.com, garptraderlaw.com, bobhawkeslaw.com, pagehowelaw.com but I'll admit my personal favorite deweycheatemandhowe is taken.


i never liked dewey, i did business with him, but i never trusted him....
 
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Article sounds like a infomercial for promoting Ngtlds.

“New domains offer greater variety, better targeting, and more specificity. For example, while .LOANS will never be as big as .com, www.home.loans is every part as valuable as www.homeloans.com from a search perspective and is the shorter domain name.”

Seems that the "super valuable" .loans yet confused with .loan is top of the list for spammers. Kinda like XYZ and TOP was until their drops. $3.49 today, cheaper than .com by $3.51

joeshomeloan.jpg




spamhaus=dotloans.jpg


https://www.spamhaus.org/statistics/tlds/

But to be fair- here why not pay $79 instead of $6.99 for the .com

joesmortgageloans.jpg
 
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I searched google for "Vacation Rentals" just now. Top are paid VRBO and Homeaway then this is the first organic listing. Somebody might verify it on their end but Vacation.Rentals didn't even rank at all and I went down 8 pages. Sad really, so much for cost recovery. And I live where there are lots of vacation rentals. AARP ranks likes 2nd page.

vacationrentalscom.jpg
 
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Not really. Consider the poster names above. They can all hang out their shingle today with a new hand reg law name: lolwarriorlaw.com, garptraderlaw.com, bobhawkeslaw.com, pagehowelaw.com but I'll admit my personal favorite deweycheatemandhowe is taken.
Oh wow, I could be a lawyer after all? :xf.grin: i love my law domain name above so much! Is it just the domain I need to buy or do I need to like do more? :xf.cool: I had considered law school in my young life, but went another path. I have failed to complete a Harvard U Contract Law MOOC 3 times, but I guess that is not really a legal education?

But to be serious :xf.frown:, I think tend to agree that the vast majority of law firms can and will find their exact legal partnership name followed by a country code or com extension.

Bob

PS Just as I was about to post I did a search using site:.law for my region of Canada. More firms using one that I would have guessed.
 
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Somebody might verify it on their end but Vacation.Rentals didn't even rank at all and I went down 8 pages. Sad really, so much for cost recovery

For me it was 6th page now. At the time of NamesCon I think they said they were third or fourth page (after being first for awhile). Just to provide a bit of perspective (from my memory of the NamesCon panel) the people running vacation rentals a small operation (I think less than 2000 listings), not very technically strong web wise, and their goal always was to move from tier 3 to tier 2, never to compete with AirBnB (I think their goal is ultimately 1% of AirBnB). They need a subscription base about double what they have now to make the $500k investment pay off.

One thing that has not much been reported but I learned in discussion at the Donuts booth is that there have been many platinum sales the last year (much more than the previous year), and some of those are at the top of Google. For example (he did not tell me this one but it is one I recently stumbled on) if you do a search on the rather generic 'seller tools' the number one in Google for me is a site offering a service operating at the tools extension.

Bob
 
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One thing that has not much been reported but I learned in discussion at the Donuts booth is that there have been many platinum sales the last year (much more than the previous year), and some of those are at the top of Google. For example (he did not tell me this one but it is one I recently stumbled on) if you do a search on the rather generic 'seller tools' the number one in Google for me is a site offering a service operating at the tools extension.

Bob

Perhaps the uptick in platinum sales @ Donuts is further evidence that new TLDs are becoming mainstream. New TLDs can be good for business. Look what happens when you enter the search phrase "good business" into the Google machine (with or without quotes). Notice what's missing in front portion of the green URL -just under the page title in search results. Google is displaying this new TLD domain name differently in search.
 
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-aye-
 
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Namestat.org shows about 1.6 million new tld drops in the last four weeks - a pace of about 400k weekly. At that pace more than 20 million drops would occur in a year's time - some 80% of the registrant base of nearly 24 million several weeks ago. With $1 to $3 first year registration promos the net decline is much slower. While many domain portfolio owners will prune some inventory annually, the drop rate is normally less than 10%. So why such an aggressive non-renewal rate with the newer extensions?
 
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Namestat.org shows about 1.6 million new tld drops in the last four weeks - a pace of about 400k weekly. At that pace more than 20 million drops would occur in a year's time - some 80% of the registrant base of nearly 24 million several weeks ago. With $1 to $3 first year registration promos the net decline is much slower. While many domain portfolio owners will prune some inventory annually, the drop rate is normally less than 10%. So why such an aggressive non-renewal rate with the newer extensions?

There are probably several reasons but the failure of Alpnames is significant. Since they suddenly closed it has been impossible for those with 2FA to renew or move, and now even the workaround with unlocking no longer works. Also of course they are registering no new ones. Alpnames were a major new extension registrar. Also about the time of ICANN64 two registries did a major culling of bad actor names accounting for I think a total of at least 60,000 sites shut down. A 4 week period is not long enough to establish any overall pattern. Other than ongoing .icu and one month .best there are relatively few good promotions right now. The total ngTLD registrations have gone up and down with promotions but have been relatively constant since mid 2016. If you compare with nTLDstats currently new extension registrations are up about 2 million from the same time a year ago.
Bob
 
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Thanks for the post. I think the article takes a fairly balanced look at the issue. A lot of sense in discussing fundamentally what a domain name is, and the nuances needed in deciding what option is best.

I think the comparison between the fragmented on demand video/broadcast world that led to many small specialized channels and the new gTLDs is a valid analogy that I had not considered before.

Thanks again,

Bob


That is funny Bob, where is @lolwarrior to agree with you that an article from new tld people saying new tlds are doing well is balanced!
 
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Bob I believe the Ntldstats site does not reflect drops on a timely basis as does Namestat.org. For example, when the 1 cent .xyz promos expired a year later, the expired registrations appeared more quickly on Namestat.org than Ntldstats which took a few months to properly reflect the drop. Consequently I believe Namestat.org is more up-to-date.
 
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Take it from me, I registered GTLD's since day 1, to protect some of my .com's, which 5 years later I didn't need to do. When the G's first came out inquiries were coming thru, marketing dollars were being spent, there was buzz, confusion, and a sense of excitement among newbies of a second gold rush possibly.

Fast forward 5 years, the inquiries are way down, I am lucky to have sold some of my stronger ones, early on setting records in several extensions, but the people looking for these mainly only have $100 or less budgets, and no real business plan, more hobby, or side business kind of thing. There are still deals getting done in 4 figures, it is the luck of the draw, or premium renewal names, or registry reserved which are garnering the attention. If you have the good names without premium, probably means you paid 4 figures in EAP to secure them, with a renewal 4X .com in most cases, it makes the investment grade consensus very hard to balance out.

If you check out that other forum GTLD extension LINK, it is a ghost town, if you go back, and read how excited people were 5 years ago, you will see some of those people really bet the farm, and took a huge losses. I have never heard LOLWARRIOR talk of any sales?

There will always be people who can carve out a niche in any crappy little industry, but most people want to be where the action, and the dollars are, and that is .com. You don't have to upsell, or BS it, when it comes top level it is what it is. These people write these BS articles, are not in the trenches everyday seeing the inquiries, and from who, seeing the new products, and who comes knocking to secure their brands. The domainers have the first insight to what is moving, and what is not, don't let anyone fool you, stick to your gut. Why work harder than you need to in crappy extensions. To be honest if .biz, or .us were released in the early rounds in 2014 do you know how much money they could have extracted early on, but we already have the data on them, nobody wants them, premium one word .biz go for 3 figures, why do people keep arguing without any real sales to back up the not so obvious.

There will be another round of GTLD's in a few years, not because they are needed, but simply more money can be extracted from companies, and consumers based on fears of brand protection, and hype of a new gold rush.

The whole purpose of the GTLD's were that there were not enough good .com's available to register, or they were to expensive on the secondary markets. What happend registry reserves, premium renewals, warehousing, and in most cases the annual renewal on some gtld's is the entire cost of an aged .com in the aftermarket which only carries forward with an $8 renewal, and not a 4 figure renewal renewal on an annual basis. It is an utter nightmare, as you have so many operators running so many different ways, all with a different set of rules. There is no protections in the framework for consumers when it comes to GTLD's, an unruly operator could easily extract a keyword extension from an owner by raising the price to a million dollars a year, since there is no cap, or no framework in the contract to directly contact the registrant, simply the registrar.
 
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Look what happens when you enter the search phrase "good business" into the Google machine (with or without quotes). Notice what's missing in front portion of the green URL -just under the page title in search results. Google is displaying this new TLD domain name differently in search.

poorly researched post bud.

check some other domain. for example: coffee.club

Type coffee.club in google search and you will see big G showing full url and not the way its showing good.business domain.

good.business is showing without https or www in front because of the way its site owner or seo team prefered to be indexed in google search.
 
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Perhaps a comparison can be made to toll-free numbers. Up until 1996, a 1-800 number with a meaningful keyword could be valuable (i.e. 1-800-TAXICAB is rented to taxi companies across the US). Then they introduced 1-888 and eventually several other alternatives. How many forum members are investing in 1-833 phone numbers? What has been your sales ratio? Roi on the phone # portfolio?

i think the comparison is fair, but not relevent no more.

WHo uses a phone number? hahahahah

I do chat or email. Don't pickup phone for anyone. Hate talking on the phone. kids today are the same.

Phones are like printed newspapers sure some use but not as much as past.

i visit site, look for help, chat, email. Need domains!!!
 
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I would like to point out that while I understand why people have made this a pro-con ngTLDs thread (I mean this is NPs :xf.grin:), I think we are being somewhat unfair to the article author @Tewksbury (welcome to NPs by the way) since the topic of the article was not whether new gTLDs were good investments. Rather, the article in a legal trade publication was to help lawyers answer the question should they use the traditional .com or consider a new extension. As such, I think it did a rather good job of providing key background. If i was a professional who knew nothing about domains before reading the article, I would come out knowing what a domain is and does, what the options are, what are the arguments pro and con a new extension, etc.

JMHO

Bob
 
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