discuss Why Dot-Best new tld may in fact be one of the "best"

[namemarket]

There seems to not be a lot of good potential keywords in front of .best These are my thoughts on that subject.

I believe one of the main perceived and quite possibly valid benefits of dot-best is keyword(s) do not necessarily need to be in front of "best" but can work without the best word in the name by being instead in the extension and which can replace the 'best' word by only being in the URL with extension.

For example, BestDomainName.com can be replaced with DomainName.Best and the search engines may rank it well or possibly even the same ranking, assuming the name is listed in the search index. A good example of that is as Cyril said 'Madeira Best' search results being the same or similar to 'Best Madeira' etc.

So the idea is BestKeyword.com or whatever can be replaced with Keyword.Best URL resulting in a shorter URL with search engines potentially giving value to the term by also using the reverse word order in the search index results. So in that random example the extension replaces a need to put the Best word in front of the dot.

I know it all sounds confusing but I have reasons to suspect this is actually correct and may be valid thinking and in fact I now personally like dot-best a lot and believe it's an excellent new extension, probably the "best" overall potential of any of the new tlds and certainly a good buy with the $1.98 promo, IMO.

 

[Bob Hawkes]

With respect to @namemarket (and recognizing that we all get a little over enthusiastic at times) I tend to agree with @frank-germany that the OP was a bit more pro .best than I feel is justified.

I view it as useful in phrases, similar to .life for example that I consider a modest ngTLD success, has the advantage of having a word that does rank high, has the linked social media potential advantage, and perhaps most importantly has owners aggressively pushing it. I know on here that irritates many but in the overall end user community will help adoption. The negatives are mainly not yet a track record in resales, limited registrations, fairly limited end use so far. Some would say semantic issues. As a domain investor the greater availability of high value words at regular prices is an important positive.

Bob

 

[Bob Hawkes]

but no one in their right mind owned a Beta VCR machine at home.

For many years we owned TWO Sony Beta VCRs at home. The beasts had great quality and lasted and lasted.

Now reading this!! People probably were quietly questioning my mental state for some time, but it was harsh to see it in print like this

Sad Bob

 

[johnnie018]

I am not a fan for .best but lets be honest about the importance of the order, how is .best different from .top? why the order is not important for .top but very important for .best?!

.top is topping sales for new gTLD although it is in reverse order like these sold domains for example:
2,636 USD => should be top.games
12,823 USD => should be top.house
9,598 USD => should be top.domain
084 USD => should be top.health

So IMO the order is not very importing in estimating the potential of this new extension.

Things against .best:

• It seems to me .top is direct competitor to .best and it is hard for .best to compete with it because .top is currently the most popular new gTLD extension.
• No direct market: there are too many options to end users that make .best hard to sell, considering that end users may go with new gTLD that is directly related to their niche (like: .cars, .finance, .store..etc)
• Limited to few .best domains per niche, for example if hosting.best is taken then the chances are very slim that another hosting company will pick .best
  
• Because it is a new extension it still requires a lot of marketing.

Things in favor of .best

• Broad market: .best is generic and can work with any niche (supermarket.best, domains.best, hosting.best..etc) and thus there is potential for the extension to become popular over time
• Because the direct competitor .top is doing well we can speculate that there is some potential value in this extension (competition is not always bad, competition can be a good sign)

Regarding SEO:
There is popular myth that domain extensions affect Google ranking, any new gTLD extension has zero benefit to SEO, unless competition is very low and the domain gets high CTR in google search results due to the ngTLD extension showing up in the domain name, which is very rare to happen because CTR in search engine is mainly related to optimized Title & Description.

Most of the .top sales are fake Chinese sales, usually nothing transfers like a lot of the .xyz Chinese sales.

 

[frank-germany]

For many years we owned TWO Sony Beta VCRs at home. The beasts had great quality and lasted and lasted.

Now reading this!! People probably were quietly questioning my mental state for some time, but it was harsh to see it in print like this

Sad Bob

the beta system was .better quality over the VHS system
but still commercially the VHS system won

same for vinyl versus CD
where the vinyl is the much superior system

so your mental status is ok I guess

 

[johnnie018]

For many years we owned TWO Sony Beta VCRs at home. The beasts had great quality and lasted and lasted.

Now reading this!! People probably were quietly questioning my mental state for some time, but it was harsh to see it in print like this

Sad Bob

Betamax is probably closer to .net than .best. Everyone knows Betamax, it is not an unknown product that nobody ever even heard of like .best.

Betamax was flawed because the tapes couldn’d hold a full movie, the smaller physical size of the tape cost it eventually and vhs just snowballed with move and more content once it started getting ahead.

.net is known and was at one point very popular compared to .com, very early on. I think it lost the format war in early days. The only chance now for .com to have competition is replacements for domains like social media, apps and whatever comes next. New letters in an extension won’t change anything, .net lost even in the early days, what chance does say .web have 20 years too late with a less commonly used term?

As for .best? That is la la land. What are people thinking? It is like selling someone about a coin you just thought up and saying it will be the next bitcoin.

 

[BrandEntrance.com]

best.cancerdoctor

would make sense

I guess a search term like that is very american.

Here we get free medical care with a minimal patient fee and have private medical as well.

We have great hospitals with medical boards and a ranking system like in the military. There are no private "cancer doctors".

 

[Joe N]

This is funny. No one? Sure maybe after VHS took over and no more rentals or blank tapes. The newgtld comparison to Vhs vs Beta, well I dunno Beta was first in market, early adopted for adult videos in the home ~1976 and at least Beta sold millions of videos and $millions in machine sales. So I looked and Sony had 18 million Betamaxes sold.

Beta btw was still used in Pro Video Broadcast cameras production even after Digital formats arrived. Consumers stopped after local Video stores stopped renting Beta tapes.

I would bet 4 and 8 track tapes were even more successful in dollar volume and sales, end users bought them and wore them out more than any ngtld.

https://www.cnet.com/news/sony-says-it-will-stop-producing-its-betamax-tapes-in-march/

Do the Ngtlds have *end user* adoption of real websites in 18 million units? I don’t know the exact stats. Or huge dollar revenue or volumes to end users (consumers). Its more like if you hypothetically rolled back time and nobody bought a Betamax, so they never sold many and all the Electronics stores (Registrars and Domainers) are stuck with dead inventory of Betamaxes (ngtld’s) they never could sell right from the gate. Which of course didnt happen with Betamax.

NGtlds might be more Like a Yugo. An unfortunate car that sold to a few people due to cheap price (800,000 units) and the poster child of product failure.

Well actually, I'm lumping all other TLDs into the Betamax bucket (except .org which continues to be a popular choice for non-profits and charities). So it would have started with .net, which, like Beta, was initially the more popular choice.

Also like Beta continued to do for decades, .net and (to a smaller degree) other gTLDs have a place and a use, but they are not the mass consumption choice of the market.

So all I'm saying is... if you're going to invest in, or even specialize in other TLDs (Beta) in a world where most average consumers want .com (VHS) then you'd better have a damn good product to offer!

 

[Joe N]

For many years we owned TWO Sony Beta VCRs at home. The beasts had great quality and lasted and lasted.

Now reading this!! People probably were quietly questioning my mental state for some time, but it was harsh to see it in print like this

Sad Bob

Ha ha! Sorry Bob... I exaggerated to make my point. We had a Beta machine too when I was a kid, but ditched it at some point in the 80's when it became clear that you needed a VHS machine if you wanted to have your choice of rental selections at the rental place.

 

[BrandableDomain]

Would the following strike you as commercial? (I know a few are, but at first glance). All of these sold in the past year (NameBio listed) for $5000+. My point is there is a whole spectrum of types of uses for domains.

• new.earth
• air.space
• have.fun
• candy.club
• spiritual.life
• face.top
• fan.top
• awakening.global
• preserve.life
• life.club
• real.men
• summit.global
• rex.one

Bob

Just read today (March 19) on tldinvestors that support.app sold for $30,000.

“Support.App sold for $30,000 by UserScape.com great price for a .app.”

https://tldinvestors.com/2019/03/daily-domain-picks-3-19-19.html

IMHO names like that where the meaning crosses the dot in logical order in a large niche work just fine. Wouldn’t be surprised if some people of millennial age would prefer it to SupportApp.com.

 

[BrandableDomain]

That's what I find so unusual... The market domination of .com has been the norm for almost three decades. The battle for dominance happened long ago. It's over now. Done. All other extensions have been relegated to niche status. Why would you invest in them when you have zero personal stake in their success?

The whole thing makes me think of the video format war from the 1980s. VHS vs Betamax. Beta was a slightly better quality product; it even hit the market a year in advance. But JVC made some smart marketing choices with VHS and effectively crushed Beta. It stuck around for years and years as a niche product, but no one in their right mind owned a Beta VCR machine at home.

These other TLDs are the Betamax of domain names, but registries keep dressing up the pig and trying to make it look like something appealing.

Don't be the one little shop on the street corner selling Beta machines when everyone already uses VHS... Sure you'll get the odd sale from people who want to give it a try, but why would you want to limit your potential customer base so much? You'd have to be amazing in this niche to make it work. It just doesn't compute for me.

That is an imaginative example using Beta / VHS as an example. But sorry, I find the comparison invalid.

Sony and Panasonic could keep manufacturing VHS machines for as long as the market wanted them. They could make an infinite number of identical VHS machines no matter how many people wanted to buy them. Supply was unlimited - and at a fair price point.

Not so with dot COM. Good, short, memorable dot COMs are pretty much “sold out” at a reasonable price. (I know, many people disagree with this.)

Unlike VHS machines, they are finite. There are only 26 letters in the alphabet so Verisign is unable to manufacture any more (quality domains).

Imagine if there was suddenly a shortage of a certain VHS part. No more tape drives or something. Well, eventually lots of people would be forced to switch to Beta machines just out of necessity.

An example I like to use is the domain Candy.com. Well that name sold for a million bucks and is off the market forever.

But now, under the new gTLD program, you have good new options like:

Candy.store

It’s all about the laws of supply and demand. I’ve never heard about a market where the laws did not prevail.

IMHO Verisign seemed to realise this at the last minute which is why they paid a massive 135 million dollars for the dot WEB string.

 

[Joe N]

That is an imaginative example using Beta / VHS as an example. But sorry, I find the comparison invalid.

Sony and Panasonic could keep manufacturing VHS machines for as long as the market wanted them. They could make an infinite number of identical VHS machines no matter how many people wanted to buy them. Supply was unlimited - and at a fair price point.

Not so with dot COM. Good, short, memorable dot COMs are pretty much “sold out” at a reasonable price. (I know, many people disagree with this.)

Unlike VHS machines, they are finite. There are only 26 letters in the alphabet so Verisign is unable to manufacture any more (quality domains).

Imagine if there was suddenly a shortage of a certain VHS part. No more tape drives or something. Well, eventually lots of people would be forced to switch to Beta machines just out of necessity.

An example I like to use is the domain Candy.com. Well that name sold for a million bucks and is off the market forever.

But now, under the new gTLD program, you have good new options like:

Candy.store

It’s all about the laws of supply and demand. I’ve never heard about a market where the laws did not prevail.

IMHO Verisign seemed to realise this at the last minute which is why they paid a massive 135 million dollars for the dot WEB string.

All good points, but don't delve too deeply into my example. It was really only to meant to illustrate the notion of consumer uptake and demand.

The only TLD that has consistent trust, recognisability, and mass-market use is .com. It's why I can sell a crazy name like Scarless/Breast/Reduction for 700 bucks in .com, and yet BreastReduction.best is available to register.

 

[BrandableDomain]

It's kinda funny that new TLDs are released all the time, and each time domainers think the new kid on the block is going to perform better than the previous ones.
Promised, this one is going to be the 'bestest' of the best.

There is a lot of truth in that, but as for me, I have been unwavering in my belief since 2013 that dot WEB will be the greatest of them all.

Being a perfect synonym for “net” it doesn’t even need years for awareness and comprehension to grow. So if you consider the following example, I think most people will understand that it is a URL pretty much straight away. Unlike many new gTLDs.

WebDesign.web

And if Verisign spends millions to hire Madison Avenue to promote dot WEB, well it could perform surprisingly well. So if it launches and achieves say 20 times the scale of dot DEV, which seems plausible to me, well that would translate to 2M domains in two weeks!

Of course it all depends of lots of factors especially premium pricing etc.

 

[Bob Hawkes]

Ha ha! Sorry Bob... I exaggerated to make my point. We had a Beta machine too when I was a kid, but ditched it at some point in the 80's when it became clear that you needed a VHS machine if you wanted to have your choice of rental selections at the rental place.

OK I feel a little better. We had used Beta (because it was technically better) in video based science research for many years so stuck with it for my home when it was time to buy a VCR. We actually almost never rented so if you take that out VHS's only advantage was price.

As has been said the analogy to domain names is probably not strong, but to me the long persistence of Beta video technology in some niches suggests that if they do some things well alternative/new extensions can sometimes be a success at some level with a very small part of the sales and registration pie.

Bob

 

[BrandEntrance.com]

That's what I find so unusual... The market domination of .com has been the norm for almost three decades. The battle for dominance happened long ago. It's over now. Done. All other extensions have been relegated to niche status. Why would you invest in them when you have zero personal stake in their success?

The whole thing makes me think of the video format war from the 1980s. VHS vs Betamax. Beta was a slightly better quality product; it even hit the market a year in advance. But JVC made some smart marketing choices with VHS and effectively crushed Beta.

VHS won because of the ease and ability to make porn. The Internet flourished in the beginning because of the massive investment related to Porn.

Yes things were better before but time goes forward. If things stayed the same the world would only be producing spare parts.

I see some really strong nTLDs like .network and I much prefer that over .net to be honest.
.net will always mean Internet or intranet but not like a social network or a collaboration of ideas.

 

[Joe N]

As has been said the analogy to domain names is probably not strong, but to me the long persistence of Beta video technology in some niches suggests that if they do some things well alternative/new extensions can sometimes be a success at some level with a very small part of the sales and registration pie.

Yeah, this is pretty much what I was getting at. So in my mind, other generic TLDs leave much less room for error. You need to own highly marketable, highly desirable terms, and buy/renew them at affordable prices to even have a chance of making the model work. I feel that .com offers a lot more wiggle room, and that's backed up by having made four figure sales within a year of hand registering a .com name (although to be fair, I have not tried to do the same with a new TLD).

Oh, and I believe VHS also had the recording time advantage for a while. At the beginning, you could record two hours on VHS (perfect for movies) while Beta was limited to one hour (Sony was unwilling to compromise on picture quality). This was one major factor early on in helping to determine who would win the format war. By the time Beta offered a longer play option, it was already too late. And as you said VHS machines were being offered at a lower cost, which was all most consumers cared about in the end, since the picture quality issue wasn't major enough to deter people.

 

[Joe N]

VHS won because of the ease and ability to make porn. The Internet flourished in the beginning because of the massive investment related to Porn.

I've heard that interesting argument! There was definitely a lot more to it then that, but yeah I wouldn't be surprised if porn played a role.

 

[xynames]

Of course it’s the best. Without any proof the promoter is claiming to have sold a couple .best domains for six figures and received a seven figure offer on another. Until I see any sales of any significant price in namebio I won’t believe it. And I hope we don’t see an end run trying to post the “sales” with some other journal that does less verification than namebio has stated that it will do for any .best sale:

Thanks for the tag, I hadn't seen this thread. We don't sign NDAs under any circumstances. I'm not really sure why it would even be needed. If the buyer consents to having the sale reported then Cyril can have them reach out to us and provide whatever info we need from their end, that way GDPR isn't a factor.

I wouldn't report any of the sales mentioned in this thread based on screenshots alone. I would need to see contracts/invoices, see evidence of a wire transfer, and I would initiate a conference call between either the buyer or seller and his bank to confirm the details of the wire are legitimate. Normally I wouldn't go quite that far, but I don't get good vibes when someone considers a letter of intent to be a done deal.

 

[EbookLover]

I see some really strong nTLDs like .network and I much prefer that over .net to be honest.
.net will always mean Internet or intranet but not like a social network or a collaboration of ideas.

The meaning of a TLD is set by the market and the users, not by domain investors or even the registries...unless the registry decides to limit it's purchase for a specific use. And it can even be influenced by various sources with the bankroll/clout to do it.

If .COM tanks in the future and people want only to develop sites about commodes on .COM domains, then it becomes a commode TLD

.NET is far superior to .NETWORK because of the ease and quickness of typing, which is especially crucial in today's mobile, fast-paced world.

Long TLDs more than 4-5 char are foolish in today's world, IMHO.

 

[namemarket]

WebDesign.web

Thanks for the helpful information and example. I also have liked .Web for a very long time and still do even after wasting lots of time and money on a worthless early reservation system by an old .web applicant (who later seems to have disappeared) was using long ago.

IMO, a name like WebDesign.Best is significantly better vs WebDesign.web

First of all ,that double web is repetitive and doesn't sound good. Also, Webdesign.Best can utilize search engine word reversing so the name implies THE BEST webdesign which is a powerful statement from a powerful word gained from the word 'best' vs saying nothing about a marketing advantage in the .Web url.

 

[BrandEntrance.com]

The meaning of a TLD is set by the market and the users, not by domain investors or even the registries...unless the registry decides to limit it's purchase for a specific use. And it can even be influenced by various sources with the bankroll/clout to do it.

That’s why I said what I think it means for me and even semantically with other word associations.

If .COM tanks in the future and people want only to develop sites about commodes on .COM domains, then it becomes a commode TLD

.NET is far superior to .NETWORK because of the ease and quickness of typing, which is especially crucial in today's mobile, fast-paced world.

Long TLDs more than 4-5 char are foolish in today's world, IMHO.

Then you can just keep on typing when we are talking to our devices.

 

[EbookLover]

At some point, # of syllables to speak will become as crucial as # of characters to type.

 

[BrandEntrance.com]

You mean like duckspeak?

 

[johnnie018]

Well actually, I'm lumping all other TLDs into the Betamax bucket (except .org which continues to be a popular choice for non-profits and charities). So it would have started with .net, which, like Beta, was initially the more popular choice.

Also like Beta continued to do for decades, .net and (to a smaller degree) other gTLDs have a place and a use, but they are not the mass consumption choice of the market.

So all I'm saying is... if you're going to invest in, or even specialize in other TLDs (Beta) in a world where most average consumers want .com (VHS) then you'd better have a damn good product to offer!

Great post. (I'd like it but my account is heavily restricted)

.net. .org, new tlds all combined they are share a few % points of the market. Even then most of that goes to .net and .org, not new tlds.

 

[namemarket]

I am not a fan for .best but lets be honest about the importance of the order, how is .best different from .top? why the order is not important for .top but very important for .best?..........

It's at least partly (other good reasons too) because best is a much more powerful word vs top.

You say I want the BEST pizza not the TOP pizza

the best wine not the top wine

best coffee not top coffee

best house not top house

best method to make money sounds better vs top method

best home loan rate not top home loan rate

best automobile loan not top automobile loan etc etc etc etc etc

I am sure there are some terms where top works as well or better but generally speaking best is the best, imo.

 

[frank-germany]

It's at least partly (other good reasons too) because best is a much more powerful word vs top.

You say I want the BEST pizza not the TOP pizza

the best wine not the top wine

best coffee not top coffee

best house not top house

best method to make money sounds better vs top method

best home loan rate not top home loan rate

best automobile loan not top automobile loan etc etc etc etc etc

I am sure there are some terms where top works as well or better but generally speaking best is the best, imo.

no you would call it

wine best
coffee best
house best
home loan best
automobile best

of course