These three domain names caught my attention in and around Austin.
Earlier this week I wrote about a bakery in Austin that uses an internationalized domain name so it can have an accent in its domain name. Here are a few other domains I’ve observed in the wild recently.
A four-letter, three-hyphen domain name
I’ve never seen so many hyphens crammed into such a short domain name before. While it looks OK, imagine telling someone to email you at n dash o dash v dash a dot com.
.Church on a truck
Here’s a bumper sticker for a local church that uses Upwards.church for its domain name. .Church will never be a runaway moneymaker, but it’s a solid winner for Donuts. It has about 25,000 names in the zone.
A flyer with a .Church
Here’s yet another church using a .church domain name. I received this flyer in the mail.
Charles Christopher says
Regarding .church, we obtained the adjacent .church ([text]church.com and [text].church) domain name and received $10K a month Google Grant access to adwords.
I ran all campaigns identically on the .com and the .church. The .church campaigns consistently received more clicks and traffic. I did A/B testing on all campaigns.
Eventually Google required a click through rate of 5% to be maintained otherwise the grant account would be lost. As a volunteer with limited time, I could not put the work into maintaining such high conversions and we lost the grant.
The best (impressions) campaign had about 20,000 impressions, 2000 clicks, and a whole lot of families we had never seen before at the church for a children’s easter event.
I would say .church works well, and thus nTLDs ….
Pueblo says
Charles, dude, please refrain from insulting our intelligence by saying that a new gtld actually outperformed a mainstream .com in human visitor traffic. The people who frequent this site know their stuff and are not .stupid
Charles Christopher says
Are you serious?
Charles Christopher says
Perhaps I should clarify a point.
I have advised our church to NOT use the .church domain anywhere in its communications. It is setup purely as a forward. This required a special request to Google to be allowed to use both domains in the single Google grant account. Normally only one domain is allowed. Google agreed to support my A/B testing. Why not? They got to learn to ….
To date I still see browsers presenting very poor user experiences to nTLD type ins. In the case of a church I think type ins are very important.
I would fight hard any attempt to make a bumper sticker as shown above. But I see the time coming when I would support such a use, just not yet. The browser experience must improve first. So I’d advise getting the domain and using it as a forward until then. Let the people making the sticker above fight the battle now, and we’ll benefit later.
That said, when people were offered an advert in Google with a .COM domain, and the same advert was offered using .church, for a period of 2 years people OVERWHELMINGLY clicked on the .church in preference over the .com, as a percentage of total impressions for each TLD. This was the case over dozens of campaigns.
Truth is truth ….
OmainsDay says
I’ve seen a few churches that are already way past the bumper sticker point…
Google: Life Church *hit images*
When everybody uses the search box for navigation, and google has no TLD bias… Why should anybody come down on a church for using the new tools available to them? Especially if its working.
Google took interest in the opportunity to a/b test, because they obviously are interested in helping create some equity in search. Not having your church’s exact match .com blatantly shouldn’t be the barrier to entry. Google want to help make it easier for these kind of organizations to come online.
Good on you Mr. Christopher! Thanks for sharing.
+anybody else seeing how google is experimenting showing the URL in mobile search? Example : Google – Good Business… – Good.business not only ranks first, but the green URL text shows “Good Business” not “Good.business”. or “www.good.business > “
Charles Christopher says
>I’ve seen a few churches that
>are already way past the
>bumper sticker point…
When I first got involved with the internet, and left my day job to do so, I was surrounded by people telling me the internet would never amount to anything.
In the next few years I found I was surrounded by people who had they exact same experience when they to left their day jobs to get involved with the internet.
The trick, I think, is to avoid becoming like those who told us “X will never amount to anything”. Change occurs more in the young more than it does in the old.
Charles Christopher says
>The best (impressions) campaign had about >20,000 impressions, 2000 clicks
Correction, CTR was about 1% not 10%, and .church was not so dominant (higher CTR) on that campaign.
Braver says
.Mormon?
dgw says
Buy bookof.mormon, eh?
Jay says
Hey Braver,
The name of the church is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
The name Mormon comes from one of the prophets who compiled the writings in what is called The Book of Mormon, Another Testament of Jesus Christ.
Though the name Mormon is not offensive, the members of the church focus on worshipping Christ.
Mormon says
Sick burn
John says
Nova was one of the best TV series ever. Yes I doubt that has anything to do with it.
nana vai says
http://www.🙂 :). com
AJ Sharma says
Very informative article and made me think about what domain names are most effective. Question though, in the post, you started that .church “has about 25,000 names in the zone.” . Any chance you can please explain how you were able to come up with that number?
Andrew Allemann says
From ntldstats.com
AJ Sharma says
Didn’t know that site existed – thanks Andrew for the info and for the quick response!
djchuang says
Since this post mentions the .CHURCH TLD, may I share that I published a book titled MultiAsian.Church – and that’s not a redirect, not merely a bumper sticker, but a book title. 🙂