Stretch of I-70 is a big promo for .biz domain name.
This past weekend I took my daughter to St. Louis to visit her great-grandfather. We flew into St. Louis, and then drove 75 minutes along I-70 to his house.
You may be surprised by the domain name I saw most often on billboards on I-70: .biz.*
Why the asterisk? Well, it was mostly one company with a .biz domain name. Porlier Outdoor Advertising has a ton of billboards along I-70 between St. Louis and Kansas City. It looks like many of them are relatively new; they struck lease deals with land owners that place some of these billboards perhaps just 50 yards apart it seemed. Many of the billboards have yet to find advertisers, so they are adorned with the company’s URL: Porlier.biz.
Porlier.com is owned by a transport and storage company outside the U.S.
How damaging is it that the billboard company doesn’t own the .com? It’s hard to say. I noticed it was .biz, but I look for these sorts of things. As long as they have a lot of empty billboards, you certainly get a lot of repetition of the domain. And if you search for “Porlier Billboards” on Google you’ll have no problem finding the company.
M. Menius says
.BIZ adorns billboards here as well in the Triad of North Carolina (Greensboro, High Point, Winston-Salem) as well as magazine ads, tv ads, trucks and vans.
Aron - XF.com says
When I read the title, I knew exactly what you were going to talk about.
Like you, I immediately looked to see what was on Porlier.com – after I passed the countless Porlier billboards.
Jim Fleming says
Did you happen to see:
http://Toys.R.US ?
When you do, you know you are on The.Real.Internet(R)
ST says
Being located in Europe.
I see ofcourse alot of ccTLD’s here mentioned for company adverts..
However when the ccTLD is taken and .com they go for .info .
If the .info is taken and not the .biz they for the .biz .
Talking to end users here in europe they do not care much .com .
They try to register the surrounding ccTLD’s if that is not possible they go for info or biz.
And why not ??? If a company puts alot of money into marketing to brand a .biz it willbe succesfull. Even if they do not own the .com
If i see the domain.biz advertised i will not goto the domain.com.
Least that is how it works outside of the USA
Aussie Guy says
Agree with ST. Here in Australia, over 95% of advertised business domain names I see are the local ccTLD (.com.au) even if the .com is available. Customers prefer, and expect, a local service and so default to .com.au. If .com.au is not available then a lot of businesses will use .net.au instead of a gTLD. For global brands like Qantas they might use .com but overwhelmingly it’s the ccTLD. And I have never seen .biz used for an Australian business!
The US really is different in this regard because .com has always been the de facto ccTLD in preference to .us. This is why I believe the new gTLDs will have hardly any impact outside the US. In countries where the ccTLD is used predominantly at present, a new gTLD won’t replace it. There may be a .music but there won’t be a .music.au or .music.de or .music.ca – non-US customers are unlikely to change the habit of going to their trusted ccTLD.
Stephen Douglas says
Again, does the PUBLIC understand the difference between the marketing punch between a .com and all other domain extensions?
Of course not.
So, they see “porlier.biz” and have no idea what they’re looking at. I feel bad for companies outside of the US who are failing to invest in the .com domains for a few thousand dollars in aftermarket, believing that their keywords with ANY domain extension is good enough, and if not, they’ll do like ST states above: “If a company puts a lot of money into marketing to brand a .biz, it will be successful, even if they do not own the .com.”
This is a great example of the failure in the domain investing community to educate their end user buyers. But then again, nobody wanted to do this up until four years ago, because there’s so many fantastic generic .com domains still available, and why “educate” your buyer to go get them at OOTB pricing, when you can buy them and sell at a 10,000% profit?
Domain investing is a double-edged sword, a conundrum, a black hole that Hawkings can’t define.
However, I’d love to see someone show me a very successful .biz domain website company.
CC says
Here in Panama where I spend a lot of time I notice a majority of big time companies here use .net even more so then .com
I think the USA centered domain crowd does not understand how other countries are not so obsessed with .com