Rick Answers Domain Gang! Friday Fun.

Afternoon Folks!!


So why ask a question and then close comments? Maybe just an oversight. But I will post my comment right here.


DomaimGang asks a funny question about my posts today and this week. But I would like to focus on the statement below:


'Rick’s statement that you need to own the .com in order to launch a business on a different TLD such as .co really surprises me.'


Why would it surprise anyone. I have stated that for well over a decade. But more importantly, is NOW we have independent confirmation from somebody that spent millions to find out.


We have NEW INFORMATION. Why would anyone close their eyes to a major discovery by an end user? It demonstrated that if you plan to build a business on a non dotcom you will likely bleed a substantial amount of traffic. That costs money and profitability and makes your competition stronger if they are in the same field.


When the President of the company makes a statement like this based on the numbers, it can't be ignored. This is a bombshell. I recognize it. Castello recognizes it, I won't mention others but they are all old timers and they get it.


'Mr. Johnson said customers responded well to the O.co advertising, but after watching the spots, 'a good portion' of those who sought out the website went to O.com, instead of O.co.'


And btw, my 4 posts pale in comparison of your 10 posts this month so far on Rick Schwartz. :-)


Have a GREAT Day!

Rick Schwartz




24 thoughts on “Rick Answers Domain Gang! Friday Fun.

  1. Sem

    I see what your saying. However, your recent sale of Meet.me is a good case in point. MeetMe.com doesn’t look very good or sound very good. Meet.me is fabulous in every way. So does a person really need to own MeetMe.com as well? Of course they will be better off having it, but, is it really, really necessary?

    Reply
  2. Rick Schwartz

    Sem,
    Yes, absolutely positively or they will regret it until the end of time.
    Meet.me may be a more brandable domain. But they have the luxury built in with the meetme.com safety net. That net only catches customers that might otherwise be lost. A very valuable asset to have and one not to give away to a competitor.
    It’s like setting sail for a 5000 mile trip and having a leak on the boat. Ignoring it will be costly later on. The minimum one would want to know is the SIZE of the leak. But a smart sailor and a safe sailor would plug up that leak regardless of the size before he left port.

    Reply
  3. Jason Thompson

    You know what I find funny about this? The fact that when I registered my .co blog domain name I had to actually train myself not to type the m at the end of co. I literally typed everything from jasonthompson.com to jasonthompsonco.com. I can relate to the frustration that the customers were having and I agree that Overstock should of owned O.com. I don’t necessarily think this is true for all extensions. I feel there have been a number of successful deployments with the .me ccTLD which prove that you can retain a customer base without owning the .com version of the name. About.me is a perfect example of this. They don’t own about.com or aboutme.com. :)

    Reply
  4. Bud

    Rick I love the blog and I think you’re right, in the majority of cases if you don’t own the .com you’re doomed, or you’ll be paying up in the future to get it. Most people equate the internet with .com, shit even my iPhone has a built-in .com button to get me to websites faster, and until I start seeing .whatever buttons it’s all about the .com

    Reply
  5. Acro

    Rick, as you know single letter .com domains aren’t allocated, with few exceptions, e.g. x.com. In the case of O.com there is no resolving domain to compete against O.co.
    Will dot com remain king? Of course. Does dot co offer alternatives for companies that don’t own the .com? Absolutely.
    The whole notion that if you don’t have the .com you can’t survive business-wise on other TLDs is a misrepresentation of how the Internet works. Germans do just fine with dashed .de domains. Italians and Greeks could care less beyond their respective .it and .gr
    ccTLDs, gTLDs, net/org etc they all serve a purpose.
    When you have a brand as big as Overstock you can make decisions that may or may not work. Why bury an entire TLD based on a single business decision, is beyond me.
    Finally, Google embraces .co as a non-ccTLD, unlike .me
    Could you please disclose the percentage of your .co registrations relatively to your entire portfolio?

    Reply
  6. Uzoma

    Rick is not only right, he cites a very cogent fact: the Overstock.com and O.co saga; he builds his case around it. So, it’s hard to argue with the facts. The quote from Overstock.com Chairman re:”Mr. Johnson said customers responded well to the O.co advertising, but after watching the spots,”a good portion” of those who sought out the website went to O.com, instead of O.co.” is his Coup de Grâce. Sometimes, the facts are not pleasant, but must be stated. I personally didn’t wish it was so, but it is. I own Lascivious.me, and don’t own Lascivious.com, so I suppose one side will have to merge with the other.

    Reply
  7. owen frager

    The litmus test is advertising/marketing and branding is does the sdomain as a call to action off a benefit to the prospect? FreeCreditReport.com YES, Meet.ME.com NO O.co AND even worse Overstolk.com NO- that’s the real failure here and the opportunities for non .com’s if they can pass this text
    9/10 people you ask on the street couldn’t tell you what an overstock was
    A going out of business sale yes
    a sale yes
    Filene’s Basement after 10 years of adverting and word of mouth YES
    see the point

    Reply
  8. owen frager

    sorry- start again:
    The litmus test in advertising/marketing and branding is does the domain, as a call to action, offer a benefit to the prospect?
    FreeCreditReport.com YES,
    Meet.ME.com YES
    O.co AND even worse Overstolk.com NO-
    that’s the real failure here and the opportunities for non .com’s if they can pass this test
    9/10 people you ask on the street couldn’t tell you what an overstock was
    A going out of business sale yes
    a sale yes
    labels for less YES
    Markdowns YES
    Cheaper Stuff YES
    Filene’s Basement after 10 years of adverting and word of mouth YES
    see the point

    Reply
  9. Homero A. Gonzalez

    DomaimGang?? (Link is correct by the way..) I agree. Must own the .com Cheers!

    Reply
  10. seo

    @ Acro
    wholly incorrect about this:
    “Finally, Google embraces .co as a non-ccTLD, unlike .me”
    google definitely does have special allowance for .me, and for .tv and .co
    recheck your facts
    however i have never come across any .co in the search engines
    whereas .tv and .me very often

    Reply
  11. RAYY.co

    @seo
    “…however i have never come across any .co in the search engines
    whereas .tv and .me very often…”
    .CO can rank better than .com sometimes…
    For example:
    My RAYY.co ranks # 4, on Google page 1 when search rayy.
    RAYY.com ranks # 6, on google page 1

    Reply
  12. Acro

    seo – My facts are checked: Google treats .co as a non-ccTLD, unlike .me. In other words, regional searches will produce .co web sites even if the search was committed outside of Colombia.
    No idea about .tv

    Reply
  13. James

    @Acro -“Could you please disclose the percentage of your .co registrations relatively to your entire portfolio?”
    What’s the point of asking this?

    Reply
  14. Domains, Oil, Gold, Land, and Food

    @ACRO….Quote:
    “The whole notion that if you don’t have the .com you can’t survive business-wise on other TLDs is a misrepresentation of how the Internet works. Germans do just fine with dashed .de domains. Italians and Greeks could care less beyond their respective .it and .gr.”
    Sure you can”survive”. I’m sure O.co could”survive”, but if you want to Prosper, then you make sure you cover all your loose ends. Just speculation here, but I bet the savvy German companies make sure they get their domains without dashes as well to match their dash domains. Can you imagine all the folks that mistype that dash with that key being so far up on the keyboard?
    Same logic applies to Italian, German, etc… COVER YOUR BASES and develop and on the defacto standard for you market.
    Also, I would bet most German companies wanting to reach an international audience or U.S. audience choose .com as the premier extension of choice.
    I think you need to rethink this Acro. Why invest in long-shots when you can shoot fish in the barrel all day long?

    Reply
  15. seo

    @ Acro
    no, you are making yourself look foolish
    you have said twice ‘unlike .me’
    here read:
    http://www.domain.me/why-me
    (point 4)
    also many articles by google and webmaster forums all over web if you decide to look
    http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=1347922
    bottom list. so google says it treats these 3 and some others as like ‘gcctlds’
    or you can even log into your google webmaster account and see for yourself!
    and you admit you don’t even know about .tv
    all three extensions .co, .tv and .me can be geo targeted with google
    they are seen as special cases with google as brandables as well as cctlds
    i am waiting for the apology Acro. then I will reveal my true identity, lol

    Reply
  16. Ian

    Must admit I can think of instances (because of funds constraints etc) and using the URL as a marketing device that you may prefer/need to go for an alternative domain extension. But rebranding a company and trying to redefine the internet standard is just stupid, thats why overstocked bleed so much advertising spend. They should stick to piling it and high and selling it cheap, they could have achieved more by focusing on procurement.
    Business is about return, probability and cost.
    Take URLs Property.com ($10m) Property.co (10k) and Propertyco.com (10k).
    Now which one would you buy if you had a total of 100k (all up) to invest in a new online property portal? Me. Propertyco.com. Simply because property com is out of budget and property.co would always be losing customers to propertyco.com and I don’t want to wait for the industry to change. However, would also look for better targeted wording depending on the nich and location focus.

    Reply
  17. Maksim

    I think traffic to meetme.com skyrocketed after the news about meet.me
    .com is the king and benefits most from tis deal.
    Just my 5 points.

    Reply
  18. Dumb and Dumber

    Dotcom is King. Always will be. People trying to pump these crap extensions is just a joke. It goes on year after year after year, and you all look like idiots.
    It is analogous to trying to argue that some average guy can date a supermodel. After all, he is a human being, and supermodels date human being, right? And there is even one case where a supermodel dated an average guy, so that means that you should be an average guy if you want to date supermodels.
    Totally disgraceful that seasoned domainers embarrass themselves and ruin newcomers to the game. You know better. Stop it, please. Go back to your ghost town forums that you have poluted and try to find some sucker to buy your dogshit.
    It is really unbelievable.

    Reply
  19. Mike

    For CCTLD, it might be different story. There are many big business in the UK and they don’t own .com. E.g. Autotrader.co.uk may be worth billion dollars but they don’t own .com version but they may not care because usually visitors will go back to .co.uk version noticing the .com site is not for uk cars.

    Reply
  20. Mike

    But many businesses in the uk has got enough income from UK crowd alone but it will depend upon the nature of the business. As I said, autotrader.co.uk is valued at around £2 billion without .com.

    Reply

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