The general public doesn’t know that domains can end something other than .com.
On November 22 I wrote an article about ICM Registry’s TV ad campaign. The ad campaign invited viewers to visit www.buy.xxx to learn more about the new .xxx domain extension.
The campaign reached a lot of eyeballs judging by the flood of traffic Domain Name Wire received from search engines.
But did people understand that Buy.xxx was a domain name, just like Buy.com is?
Some did, but there was a lot of leakage.
Michael Berkens has made note of a couple good data points. He owns BuyXXX.com, which has received a bunch of traffic. Also, Compete.com shows a spike in traffic to XXX.com.
Here’s another data point: the actual search terms people used to find the article on Domain Name Wire.
The good news is that 76% of the over 10,000 searches that meant to look for www.buy.xxx actually used that as the search term. They typed in www.buy.xxx or buy.xxx. (Why they didn’t type that into the address bar rather than the search box is a different matter).
But that leaves 24% of people that didn’t realize something other than .com could come after the dot.
www.buy.xxx.com and www.buyxxx.com each received 6% of the searches. (That would explain the flood of traffic to Berken’s buyxxx.com domain name.)
Other terms getting at least 100 searches include:
www.buyxxx
buyxxx.com
wwwbuyxxx.com
www.buy xxx
www.buy xxx.com
The numbers are striking, and applicants for new top level domains should keep them in mind.
I believe that over time people will understand that something other than .com (or a country code) can come after the dot. But it will take a while for many people to figure it out.
In the meantime, it wouldn’t hurt to buy second level .com domains that you think will be applied for at the top level.
Jon says
Over time nothing will change. Majority of people do not really understand the difference between email address vs website address, or the difference between typing website address vs searching for something in google. And that is after 15 years of learning.
That is the main reason all new TLDs are destined to fail. Any business choosing to use a new TLD can only rely on links for marketing. Marketing offline or marketing via any kind of word of mouth is totally impossible.
Joel Stein says
Nobody really cares. .XXX is off to a horrible start. Most of the companies buying these domains arent even involved in the porn biz. Which will no doubt lead to problems for this tld down the road.
Also read that the biggest porn king Manwin/Playboy is suing .XXX and ICANN. Seems like .XXX is trouble, and more importantly non profitable. Best to steer clear from this huge highway accident thats coming soon down the road.
Bryan G. says
I was in line at Kmart a couple weeks ago behind a lady joining Kmart Shop your Way Rewards. The cashier asked if she wanted to add her email now or later. Lady said “now”. [long pause] Cashier “what’s your email?”. Lady “WWW AT (name + number) DOT AOL” [pause, puzzled looks] “oh nevermind my daughter will do it later”
Domain Name Newsletter says
Gotta ask do any americans type in .us ??
Tom G says
Folks in Germany, Netherlands, UK, and elsewhere have certainly grown accustomed to alternative extensions.
I’m guessing the lady in line at Kmart is not in the target demographic.