by Aaron Krawitz, Gary Males & Patrick Carleton
[Editor’s note: this is a guest article about the potential of IDN geo domain names.]
We’ve long been believers in GeoDomains and continue to be on the lookout for new and lucrative niches, which is why we have each individually made substantial investments in IDN GeoDomains.
With the fog of uncertainty finally lifting over IDNs, now is the ideal time for for geo investors to stake a claim in IDNs where the window of opportunity is quickly closing.
For years, antagonists of non-latin IDNs have focused on the premise that the part to the right of the dot was still in English. Let’s face it, [non-English] dot [English “com”] never made any sense, and that was the number one reason why many didn’t take a closer look.
But a few weeks ago, this all changed, as VeriSign finally showed its hand and put to bed the rumors of how these half IDNs were going to operate. In a brief, but game changing interview, Vice President of Policy and Compliance for VeriSign Information Services (VIS) Chuck Gomes spoke of how an existing [non-English] dot [English “com”] could be unlocked so that the domain owner also owns the rights to the same domain but with a localized extension (i.e [the same non-English domain] dot [non-English “com”]). For example, the owner of the Japanese domain, ニューオーリンズ.com (New Orleans), would also hold the rights to the same keyword with a non-English extension in the corresponding local language, such as ニューオーリンズ.コム. The characters “コム” are the familiar way to express “com” in Japanese.
So what does this mean for GeoDomainers?
ICANN’s IDN program aims to deliver on many promises, and the majority of these promises are to native speaking countries. IDNs intrinsically breed nationalistic pride in having one’s own language represented in a domain name, so it makes complete sense that GeoDomains of native cities/towns in their respective languages will be warmly welcomed.
What should we make of the competition, the new IDN ccTLDs?
Russia’s new .рф extension is a prime example, which, like the existing Japanese ccTLD are reserving all geos for government use. You can bet there will be mildly interesting informational sites put up on these geos for IDN ccTLDs, but they will be void of any commercial use. This will clear the way for IDN dot com names to dominate.
Where are the opportunities?
With only 1 million IDNs registered today, there is ample opportunity, and most old-time IDNers haven’t bought geos with a population under 100,000!
We are still in the early days of the IDN market and geos can be picked up for bargain prices on droplists or even occasionally at reg fee.
Aaron Krawitz of IDNBlog and Gary Males of IDNDemystified co-own IDNDroplist, IDNTools and IDNNewsletter. Patrick Carleton is Executive Directory of Associated Cities.
Thanks Andrew.
Interesting post thanks – the future popularity of geo idns makes perfect sense to me.
What resources do you recommend to find the correct translations of city names in various non-roman languages/scripts? These would need to be online resources so you could copy/paste to search for domains. Using paper dictionaries would get very complicated due to then having to type in the relevant script.
Pretty much every major world country/city has a Wikipedia page entry dedicated to it describing population, GDP, tourism etc making Geo’s one of the easiest niches to work with.
There will usually be multiple versions of the Wiki page in different languages, and on the English page it usually states the native term.
There are a few gotchas with Wikipedia, but it’s certainly a good place to start, to then do further research.
Take a look at this page on Tokyo, you’ll see the native name for Tokyo in brackets: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo
@jj try http://idn.bz
The question is, though, how well will they monetize? I seriously doubt the Castillo Method is going to work. Is someone going to hire salespersons to canvas Irkutsk trying to sell banner ads to hotels?
The value in pure geo ascii.com names of midsize to large Western cities exists in the massive amount of type-in traffic they receive and how that traffic can be converted- usually via a city-guide type format of some kind- into affiliate profit (hotels, restaurants, paid “directory listings”, etc)
Even if we presume that the area and region addressed by the geo idn in question has a reasonable market for some sort of definitive ‘city guide’, how do we leverage that? Anyone checked out some of the click prices for these places? Yeah, I suppose we could wait forever for someone in Ulan Bator to make a killer bid for our .com and maybe the risk/reward metrics are there for speculative ownership for some European and Japanese cities, but for those of us who develop and own domains as earning platforms rather than as “collectibles”, where’s the beef?
I hate to be a spoil sport & really like the fact you guys are promoting the IDN market. But this post reads more like a Verisign ad than a general informative articles about the benefits of IDN Geos for investors.
1. ALL GEOS are reserved for government use. No they aren’t. They may reserve major cities & provinces in that country but other countries highly traveled by the locals are not reserved. Using ALL is misleading.
2. There will be No Commercial activities on government owned sites. Sorry to burst your bubble but countries do have country owned tourist boards who have sites that list hotels activities, shows that you can even book. I used to work for one of these.
3. Why make other new ccTLDs the competitor?
I find even the authors own extensions other than dot com. As a new comer looking at IDNs many who look for these informative guest posts & keep seeing “Why IDN coms are good” instead of just facts about IDNs & the use, it doesn’t build trust for those who may rely on you as seniors in this field.
I would rather see
These are all the options new IDN investors have pros & cons instead of constantly seeing the initial investors look like everything is catered towards their longtime investments.
I think I might not be the only thinking this way.
@Maxl-
Regarding your clarifications:
1. The geos in the ccTLD markets described are reserved for government use. Meaning Japan reserved Japanese cities and prefectures (but not South African cities).
2. The geos in the ccTLD markets described are run by the government rather than by commercial enterprises. Of course there could be a government tourism bureau on the site.
3. Everyone is asking whether to buy ccTLDs or dot com’s. It is best to own some of each to hedge one’s bets but we believe more in dot com’s for the reasons listed.
@Anon
You raise some good points.
Re the market size, yes of course you need to choose carefully which country/language, and steer towards the wealthier economies with a healthy tourism trade. Your point about development is a good one, and obviously for us “foreigners” it will be more difficult; but that doesn’t make it impossible, it just makes the dynamics different, and that’s exactly the down side in all this. The upside is being able to acquire at reg fee or “cheap” on the aftermarket.
@Maxl
It certainly wasn’t meant to be a Verisign ad, and we’re not selling anything here, just simply a heads-up that there are opportunities.
I have always publicly said that a well balanced portfolio should have an equal balance of ccTLD and gTLD; but in the case of the geo niche, the opportunity is in gTLD because of what we are seeing happen in the ccTLD space. Japans .jp have always reserved IDN geos, and the Russian govt have already said that geos will be reserved in Russia’s new .рф IDN ccTLD. Will the rest of the new IDN ccTLDs follow this pattern when they come on line? maybe. But with the countries/languages above approaching this in the manner they are, and with unregistered cities out there in gTLD, then this can only mean an opportunity.
@Maxl
To be clear.. when talking about reserved geos in IDN ccTLDs, I am referring to geos native to that country.
.com has always been King. I am not surprised to discover that that is the case in native scripts as well.
Did the .cn registry reserve their respective geos?
@Norm
<<>>
Yes they did. They also blocked geo’s non-native to their geography, for example 肯尼亚.cn (Kenya.cn)
i though owners of .jp has the first rights ? not .com ??? interesting to see what happens
Here’s some more information on IDNs from VeriSign:
https://domainnamewire.com/2010/02/26/verisigns-plans-for-com-idns-become-clearer/
Nice article. Disagree with the sentiment that IDN.com never made any sense. For example, any Japanese person proficient at typing can easily add the .com suffix. They have done it a million times and it is second nature.