Popular wisdom tells us that people/consumers/non-web-folk automatically think dot COM when they hear or see an offline advertisement for a web address.
So in theory if one company had example.NET and another company had example.COM and example.NET was advertised on a radio ad or TV ad, the example.COM company would get free traffic.
Are there any actual studies that say "how much" free traffic? Or how much traffic is lost to type ins of the wrong extension?
[edited by: Rodney at 7:25 pm (utc) on June 12, 2007]
I assume that you're not talking about generic domains when you choose, as your example, "Yourname.tld". If Your(business&website)name.tld is a truly unique - a made up, one of a kind business name, then I'd say it would be easier to analyze the traffic loss or bleed.
However, when it comes to generic traffic domains direct navigators aren't looking for "the website" they're looking for "any website" focused on the topic of the domain.
Perhaps, in the case where Your(business)name.tld=Genericname.tld you might "loosely" back into the issue by considering the reports that "X percentage" of web search traffic is direct navigation traffic? I've read figures of 10+%. However, in the case of parked or developed generic dotcom domains, their traffic really isn't a bleed-off to the other generic TLD versions so the question doesn't quite square with reality. The traffic isn't "lost", it's just not gained, by the other, non-default TLD, generically named website.
To put the idea in context, I'd like to hold RealEstate.com, but I wouldn't be all that upset if I held RealEstate.net/info/org. I wouldn't say "I'm losing traffic to RealEstate.com". I'd just admit that I don't have the benefit of the default dotcom assumption.
Traffic to domains such as Dinsey.com or Dizney.com - if or when they are parked and populated with links to "that other business" - is traffic "lost" - at least temporarily - as it is far easier to grasp that the direct navigator in those cases, likely a child, is looking for the real thing - the actual website - of DisneyWorld or Disney.
[edited by: Webwork at 2:34 pm (utc) on June 13, 2007]
