New TLD Evaluation

Is .biz second-rate?

[canuck]

Anyone notice some sort of "second-rate" stigma associated with these new extensions - .biz and .info especially?

I was very active in the .info and .biz landrushes and acquired several good names, as well as shuddered by the many roll-out fiascos (see ICANN NewTLD Forums [forum.icann.org] for roll-out problems).

Anyways, from my experience there does seem to be some consumer confusion with the whole .BIZ tld especially. Is this a country-specific domain (similar to .bz)? Do you sell to Americans? Where are you based? And why don't you own the .COM version? are you second-rate? fly-by-night?

Let's face it, your average internet user is not familar with anything outside the .com/.net/.org namespace (with the exception of some well established countries... .de, .co.uk, etc.). And many only know of .com unfortunately, and Afilias (.info) and Neulevel's (.biz) failed committment to effectively advertise their TLDs as per their ICANN agreement has made these TLDs so far a failed experiment.

Thoughts?

- canuck

PS. I think .INFO has a much better chance of success due to its intuitive nature with information and the internet... although I have limited experience with developed sites in this extension as of yet.

[SEO practioner]

Hello Canuck

You are partly right. I own a couple of .biz too. I also own a few .ws and .cc

Like you, being a Canuck too :-) I also have a lot of .ca too, wich are all doing very well. I would say that the top 4 best recognized country tld's are:

.ca
.co.uk
.de
.us ...(starting to be popular now)

So, beauty is all in the eye of... the Internet searcher I guess. We all know that the best of the best will always be .com but have you tried in getting some good ones lately? They are all taken! Even the keyword1-keyword2.com are hard to come by, depending on the exact keywords you need.

If I would be ICANN, I'd come out with .com2

Would that make sense more than .biz or .info?
We shall see

:-) SEO

[canuck]

Absolutely, some country domains are very effective, however, on a pure global TLD basis I would pick a second or third-rate .com any day over a .biz domain.

Granted, how often does a user truly see a domain's extension? Definitely on the Contact/Email webpage, and quite possibly during the Checkout process and even during the initial Search.

For one particular .biz venture I pour thousands into PPC advertising every week, so the question is How much more attractive would my advertising and sales pitch be with a .com?

Why shop at a second-rate establishment! ;)

Yes, these new extensions are only 1.5 years-old, however, if they lose the trust of webmasters to use and promote them (as well as the Registries not having the money to properly promote the extension) then will more time really matter? .INFO may well succeed due to its intuitive nature and the growing number of excellent information websites in this extension, however, .BIZ for commerce may continue its struggle indefinitely.

- canuck

[mbauser2]

Anyone notice some sort of "second-rate" stigma associated with these new extensions - .biz and .info especially?

Let me put it this way: In the entire time .biz has been active, I've seen .biz used in a television commercial once. Frankly, .tv seems to be more popular (and recognizable) in the U.S.

(I was actually working for a domain registrar when .biz and .info were rolled out. Judging from the registrations I saw, most .biz domains were being grabbed by speculators, pornographers, and multi-level marketers. That's definitely a crowd that could create a second-rate impression.)

[j_h_maccann]

I can't say for

.biz

, but I see no problem at all with

.info

.

I made a site for a UK museum; their main visitor-information site is at

www.MUSEUM-NAME.ac.uk

, and we put some related research information at

www.MUSEUM-NAME.info

. It's attracted thousands of visitors in the first month.

Also, the

.info

site was picked up by Google immediately, and appeared as #1 for its page title within 48 hours.

[dingman]

Another of the new TLDs that seems to be doing all right is .coop. Perhaps because people don't really expect their co-ops to have a first tier domain?

I know that when I decided to set up a domain to promote my consulting work, I only considered .biz as an afterthought - kinda "having me.biz as well as slightly-longer.com couldn't hurt", but I wouldn't have done .biz as my primary domain. Turns out some company grabbed me.biz for no reason I can think of, anyway. They aren't doing anything with it, and so far I haven't felt any desire to ask them for it.

[CritterNYC]

Anyone notice some sort of "second-rate" stigma associated with these new extensions - .biz and .info especially?

The only place I normally run into .biz names is in spam.

[johnraphone]

.biz and .info definately up to the popularity levels of other extentions. In fact, I don't know one .biz or .info web address. .com is still the powerful one, .org is 2nd best, but I noticed more and more advertising for .net addresses.