GoDaddy drops the .com and the ubiquitous drop down box for domain name search.
GoDaddy rolled out a new marketing message and site enhancements overnight.
There are two subtle changes to GoDaddy.com that are actually a big deal to the new top level domain name and domain investor communities.
First, GoDaddy dropped the .com from its logo. It announced this change during a conference for new TLD applicants in March. Although it has been dropping .com from some of its advertisements, it has finally made the switch on its website.
Second, as I told you would happen, GoDaddy has gotten rid of the drop down box in its domain search box. Now it’s just a search box with a Go button. You can still type in an extension and the results page will show the result with the extension, but GoDaddy has removed a secondary thought process from domain search. GoDaddy is not the first domain registrar to make this move.
Anyway they did a great job with lighten the website, which is now much pleasantly easier to navigate.
If you type in a search without an extension, take a look at the subsequent page. The search box will *add* the .com automatically. For example, search for “Example” and click “Go”. On the next page, it will say:
Sorry, EXAMPLE.COM is already taken. Really want it?
and then the search box itself will say “EXAMPLE.COM” instead of just “Example”. So, it’s not really a push towards new gTLDs at all. .com is still the king, indeed, the other non-coms are an afterthought, pushed back even further in people’s minds than before (and not even given any shelf space via the drop-down listbox of extensions).
@ George
It’s obvious that .com will continue to be the first ext appended to keywords entered in the search box, if for no other reason than there will be plenty of new gTLDs but only one can be selected as the first option by GoDaddy, which is supposedly the most important.
why mention the De Facto “pavlovian” knee-jerk default intuitive extension?
When you darn well know what people will type 99% of the time if you have any doubts check ALL Fortune 500 companies as an example…
Does Amazon need to say Amazon.com ?
yes or No? and why ?
Can’t hardly wait till the Madison Ave’ gurus give an opinion on the New gTLDs…
The addition of 80’s B movie icon, Jean-Claude Van Damme, in the homepage visuals is retina-popping.
Around 2002 there was a whole big movement to drop the .COM from domain names. All kinds of corporations did it.
That fad faded in only about one year or so.
It may not be a big deal for GoDaddy to do this, but it would just be dumb for other companies to try.
I registered two domain names today on GD. When I entered the domain names, .com was chosen by default as they were still available. However, when I tried just a moment ago by entering “chefs”, only .org and .net choices were presented. No .com!
When looking at the GoDaddy logo on my e-mail account, I’m still seeing “GoDaddy.com”.
GoDaddy has gotten rid of the drop down box in its domain search bo
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