Why take .net over .com?!

[Lyte]

I'm checking the availablity of some names (in a series) and I'm finding that 8 outta 10 times people are reg'ing the .net! Why would they take the .net over the .com??

 

[JMJ]

Contrary to popular belief most companies could care less what their extension is. I told one of my clients I could buy their name in .com the other day and they were quite contempt with their .info. At the time those companies picked up their names the .com might have been taken and since then has droped or mabey they are a internet type company and prefer the .net? They may already have a countless number of business cards, billboard, newpaper ads with their .net on them. This is not saying they wouldn't be interested as I have quite a few .coms where other extensions are taken and some have shown an interest but when it comes down to price their interest ever so diminishes.

My experience is these are people who don't know much about and typically don't tend to their site as much or even gain much if any business from it. It's more for show than anything. So when you come at them with a nice figure for you it's not so nice for them because they pay -$35 for a perfectly good domain now. In fact I have a lady who utterly despises me because I want $150 for a .com because she pays $35 a year for her .net.

Where the price does look nice is when another person/company other than that company comes knocking. I used this on my last sale to drive my price into the $$$$ instead of the $$$. Only in this case there were several extensions taken.

 

[inspiration100]

i've noticed this many times as well. I really dont get it. Even someone who is not into domains or even webmastering, knows that .coms are the most popular tld.

 

[jamminsport16]

I notice this very little. More .com i see reg'd instead :/

 

[Veolus]

Yeah, this is what happened to me and a friend. I was buying my friend a domain for his forum which was gfxsector.com and we found that gfxsector.net was taken and now we are receiving some hits from gfxsector.net :D

 

[1rrr1]

i think that it might be a good idea to reg the .com if the .net is quite developed, or is a company. You might get them wanting the name soon.

 

[FusunMedia]

That's odd, I've NEVER seen an instance where the .net was registered and the .com available. If only that were to happen more often.

 

[mole]

A lot of .COM names are deleted every day, probably registered earlier than the .NET and thus deleting first. When looking through deleteddomains.com, you can sometimes find some recently deleted "good" names available on the .COM namespace that nobody put a backorder on. But of course, what is good to some may be totally crappy to others.

 

[harpo]

When was in bali last month and malay it seemed alot of people over there like .net saw billboards there were alot of signs and adver in that ext
Here in Hawaii i have seen a companies they are into .us over in Germany they love .info
different places have alter prefrences i guess.
As time prevails .com will lose its ranking. probobly be #1 but not soooo
monopolizing...

 

[4u-domains]

Like VHS and Betamax, PCs and Macs I think it would have been better all round if .net had become the daddy. It 'looks' right and seems right for every internet application. IBM.net - IBM on the net... It works for everything.
However .com rules and there is no going back.

Even now, though, .net looks good on sites and especially any web services site and I would have no qualms developing on a .net BUT would rather have the .com pointing to it.

The bottom line for me is that any dictionary type-in based sites, such as guidebooks.com would benefit hugely from being a .com and any lesser TLD would lose traffic to the .com.
On the other hand, any non-dictionary domain such as bluebloodwebhosting.xyz can be put on ANY extension as you are only, on the whole, going to be relying on google clicks or link clicks.

 

[Midano]

Developed .net, available .com - in 8 cases out of 10 these sites are either Korean or Japanese. Check the whois next time you stumble into one.

 

[AdoptableDomains]

1. A lot of companies chose the .net in the dot-com boom because someone wanted 6 figures for the .com. Now they've settled on that name and the .com owner may have let it delete and the .net owner doesn't follow it.

2. Some sites DON'T want to be considered "COMmercial", or think the networking aspect of .NET sounds better.

3. Some just know or knew very little when they registered their name, they saw a list of all the TLD's and chose one that wasn't dot-com. I've seen a couple companies with .ws (hyphenated even) when the .com was available.

4. Hosting and networking does look better on .net. Some companies own both, but actually use the .net redirecting the .com to it.

 

[mole]

Domainers probably have a much more passionate fixation about .COM than normal folks. They've so been brainwashed about natural type-ins and PPC income from that to the point that they forget that their are some people who actually develop sites and rely on search engines/directory listings/PPC listings for traffic.

Why do you think search marketing revenue is growing 35% each year?

 

[VG_KING]

There used to be a really successful site called XBoxRepublic.net, and I was able to register XboxRepublic.com...

Man that domain got a LOT of hits! :D

 

[IAmAllanShore]

.net's are heavy in the eastern-asian market, especially #'s.
.net also makes a certain amount of sense for internet service companies (Hosts/ISP's/Registrars/etc).
Aside from that, I too am at a loss.
-Allan

 

[ThreeD]

That's odd, I've NEVER seen an instance where the .net was registered and the .com available. If only that were to happen more often.

hehe you gotta be kidding I see that happen all the time, some people just don't realize that they can gain extra traffic if they reg .com/.net/.org

 

[FusunMedia]

hehe you gotta be kidding I see that happen all the time, some people just don't realize that they can gain extra traffic if they reg .com/.net/.org

I'll keep my eye out On a serious note though, for mostly/all keyword domains i've registered, there has never been an instance where the .net was taken and the .com available.

 

[Kenny]

Domainers probably have a much more passionate fixation about .COM than normal folks. They've so been brainwashed about natural type-ins and PPC income from that to the point that they forget that their are some people who actually develop sites and rely on search engines/directory listings/PPC listings for traffic.

Why do you think search marketing revenue is growing 35% each year?

Once again Mole.... you must have been a carpenter in another life.