In australia even when i use google/com instead of google/com/au the .com.au are always at the top , i think many business's see it as an advantage to be seen as local , you only have to look at dnjournal to see how the cctld sales have increased , also now dnjournal have the country codes above the rest of the gtld's . A fad ????
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Yep, a fad as an investment by domainers, who often reg/buy without knowing a country's culture, political makeup, and language.
Not a fad for businesses to use their ccTLDs (as developed websites) in their own countries or in countries where they have business interests. For example, Spanish domainers can make money by investing in .es domains because they know their language and the best keywords for that ccTLD.
Time after time, I have seen domainers reg the incorrect spelling of a foreign word, thus ending up with a worthless domain.
I'm NOT a ccTLD hater--I think they have their special niches--but trying to hype up ".me" as a social networking TLD is a great mistake because Google still ranks it as if it were a Montenegro site (unless you SEO the hell out of it, and what's the point? You might as well buy a second- or even third- tier .com).
Here's an example: I have Snark [dot] me, on which I have built a blog with mostly original content. You would think that for the word "snark," my site would be on page one of the search engines. Well, you'd be wrong. I don't even know on what page the darn thing ranks. On the other the hand, Snark [dot] com is a static page that has remained the same forever (and that is the owner's right), and yet his/her page ranks in the first or second page of Google. Now, why is that? I would venture a guess that Google sees .me as irrelevant from any IP except a Montenegran IP, but that .com (or any of the Global TLDs) are relevant anywhere in the world. Once I understood this, I stopped regging foreign ccTLDS. I have a few in some great keywords (which I'll keep for now), but I won't be regging/buying any more. I could reg some .us because that is my country, and I understand the culture and language, so I'm more likely to register relevant and sensible keywords. On the other hand, regging English words in .de doesn't make sense, unless that word is widely used and accepted in Germany. (In my early days, I was guilty of this practice :red: ).
evirtual1: Google is reading your Australian IP, not whether you are on Google.com or .com.au, and customizes your searches accordingly. I'm currently living in Macedonia, and although I search using Google.com, I do get a lot of .mk entries in my 1st page choices. But I also get mostly dotcom (and some other gTLDs) sites because my searches are in English, but what I DON'T get on page 1 of Google are .es, .hu, .me, .de, .tv, etc. If I start typing in Cyrillic, I'll get mostly .mk sites as choices and Cyrillic adsense.
(Interesting related sidelight: in the display ads in my Yahoo email, I am constantly being offered a Green Card, although my Yahoo is a dot com. My Macedonian IP and Yahoo do not realize that I'm an American living abroad, thus making their Green Card pitch to an uninterested audience. But I suppose it's a numbers game for advertisers.)
A lot of those ccTLD sales you are seeing in DNJournal's are probably sold domainer to domainer; about a year ago, some of the domaining gurus started hyping ccTLDs as a great investment, about the same time that ccTLD registrars started seeing profit in loosening up registration requirements--and the stampede began.
As a domainer investment, the bottom will fall out of ccTLD investments--a few domainers will get rich, but most investors will lose--at least this is how I see it.
I could be wrong and lose out on the greatest opportunity of the century. Or that Google will throw up its e-arms and concede that all TLDs are global in nature. Then I'll lose again. But I don't see that happening. Google seems to be very interested in developing niche and highly sophisticated customized searches and seems to be moving quickly in that direction.
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