.ie domain's

edures777

With the recent selling of .ie's below cost price, do people think in time a .com will hold more value as a brand ?

Should someone considering a business plan with a long life cycle be considering a .com as a brand?

RoadKillTs

Should someone considering a business plan with a long life cycle be considering a .com as a brand?

Its no harm having both but if you have an Irish business selling in Ireland then the its more important to have the .ie domain. If anything .com is becoming more devalued.

forbairt

edures777 wrote: »

With the recent selling of .ie's below cost price, do people think in time a .com will hold more value as a brand ?

Should someone considering a business plan with a long life cycle be considering a .com as a brand?

I'd pretty much always be telling clients to get both either way.

Are the low costs in some cases not just attributed to high volume of sales ?

There is still the check via the IEDR as to why you should be getting a website and your rights to the domain name .. so the cost while a factor .. still has another factor involved. Ultimately the .com is key in my mind BUT .. there are so many new domain extensions popping up or going to be popping up over the next while its probably going to be more down to SEO and hitting those number 1 and 2 spots on google ( /next favourite search engine)

mrs2be.ie

Depends really on whether your brand is international or Irish? Having both domain extensions is a smart idea if you want to protect your brand.

jmcc

edures777 wrote: »

With the recent selling of .ie's below cost price, do people think in time a .com will hold more value as a brand ?

No. For Ireland, unless you are targeting a global market, the .ie is a far more valuable domain than its equivalent .com domain.

Should someone considering a business plan with a long life cycle be considering a .com as a brand?

Irish market - .ie. Global market - .com. It is that simple.

Regards...jmcc

mrs2be.ie

A dot IE is supposed to rank better for Ireland. Apparently!

rolion

don't ignore the possibility of having a .eu domain !

jmcc

rolion wrote: »

don't ignore the possibility of having a .eu domain !

The .eu ccTLD is not really used in Ireland and has minimal brand visibility. From memory, there are only around 8K .eu domains on Irish hosters. Though Eurid (the .eu registry) claims that there are 51K or so "Irish" .eu domains, the reality is that tens of thousands of these are owned by non-Irish cybersquatters and cyberwarehousers using Irish front companies. That said, if the .eu is available then register it. But don't make the mistake of using .eu as a primary brand for an Irish website.

Regards...jmcc

mneylon

.eu domains can be registered in minutes - no extra paperwork or headaches
All you need is an address in the EU

none

jmcc wrote: »

The .eu ccTLD is not really used in Ireland and has minimal brand visibility. From memory, there are only around 8K .eu domains on Irish hosters. Though Eurid (the .eu registry) claims that there are 51K or so "Irish" .eu domains, the reality is that tens of thousands of these are owned by non-Irish cybersquatters and cyberwarehousers using Irish front companies. That said, if the .eu is available then register it. But don't make the mistake of using .eu as a primary brand for an Irish website.

Regards...jmcc

Judging by the fact that you stopped lambasting .eus on your blog, you've probably realised that they can survive the critique;) Despite EURid, Ovidio, etc. Like any Brussels-related bureaucracy, it seems destined for success not because of the inteligence or talents of its creators, but because of the sheer volume of the market at their disposal:cool:

jmcc

none wrote: »

Judging by the fact that you stopped lambasting .eus on your blog, you've probably realised that they can survive the critique;)

I've been busy with a new website - you may have noticed.

Despite EURid, Ovidio, etc. Like any Brussels-related bureaucracy, it seems destined for success not because of the inteligence or talents of its creators, but because of the sheer volume of the market at their disposal:cool:

I would not put it that way because .eu is currently sitting on its own version of the Subprime problem. It has been running a 'buy one, get one free' deal for .eu registrars and it seems to have renewed that scheme. The reality is that this is subsidising growth in a similar fashion to the growth of .info but without the .info's success. The bulk of .eu's growth seems to be coming from the Eastern European states who are beginning to use it in place of .com but as regards the older EU states, it is barely making 10% of the numbers of the registered ccTLDs. When you take the .com footprints of these countries into account, the .eu is in a far worse position in the older EU countries as they are often .ccTLD/.com.

A survey of Irish hosted .eu websites that I ran recently showed that .eu usage was almost identical to that of Irish hosted .biz websites. Many of these .eu registrations were brand protection.

Regards...jmcc

mneylon

jmcc wrote: »

It has been running a 'buy one, get one free' deal for .eu registrars and it seems to have renewed that scheme.

No they haven't and that's not how the last promotion they had worked anyway ..

jmcc wrote: »

The reality is that this is subsidising growth in a similar fashion to the growth of .info but without the .info's success.

Gross misrepresentation of facts

Fact - most domain registries run promotions to their registrars

jmcc wrote: »

The bulk of .eu's growth seems to be coming from the Eastern European states who are beginning to use it in place of .com but as regards the older EU states, it is barely making 10% of the numbers of the registered ccTLDs. When you take the .com footprints of these countries into account, the .eu is in a far worse position in the older EU countries as they are often .ccTLD/.com.

Can't argue with that.

none

Regarding com and info extensions.

.com has just celebrated 25 years and you know better than me that for the first few years it was a dud with just a handful of names registered. It may have 80 something million now but it took it a while to take off, a good while. Surely longer than .eu is taking now.

.info is more than twice older than .eu and what? Mere 6 million for ten years. Funny you call it success?

I have no problem with any domain extension and I have no favourites, I just try to be realistic and fair. I do raise my hat to the popularity (and value, to that matter) of .com but I can only laugh at claims of .info's success, sorry.

With regard to .eu, I explained my reasoning behind its value (and popularity, to that matter). It has the niche and its quite unique, whether you like it or not. And there's really no comparison or alternative just because it's a niche name. If you care about it or not, that's totally up to you but, again, suggestions that it's only popular in Eastern Europe are not quite correct, to say the least. Since its open launch 4 years ago, I kept an eye on it and my understanding is that the German and Dutch are not less interested in it than the Poles and Czechs. I'm not even suggesting to check EURid figures which you know better than me, it is based on my personal data.

To sum it up, taking into account its age and niche, .eu is doing pretty well.

jmcc

none wrote: »

Regarding com and info extensions.

.com has just celebrated 25 years and you know better than me that for the first few years it was a dud with just a handful of names registered. It may have 80 something million now but it took it a while to take off, a good while. Surely longer than .eu is taking now.

The difference is that .com is global and .eu is not. Much of the growth in .com is driven by parallel registrations in the ccTLDs. In simple terms, this means that many .com registrations have a similar registration in a ccTLD. From memory, a paper by DEnic a few years ago mentioned something like 12% of .de domains have an identical domain in .com TLD.

.info is more than twice older than .eu and what? Mere 6 million for ten years. Funny you call it success?

Yes. Its main competition is .com and to a lesser extent .net .org and .biz. Of the new gTLDs launched back then, the .info is doing a lot better than .pro, .museum, .travel, .coop or .biz. The .biz gTLD is only around two million domains.

I have no problem with any domain extension and I have no favourites, I just try to be realistic and fair. I do raise my hat to the popularity (and value, to that matter) of .com but I can only laugh at claims of .info's success, sorry.

It is your opinion and you are entitled to it. Mine differs.

With regard to .eu, I explained my reasoning behind its value (and popularity, to that matter).

So .eu is a regional TLD - that's all it is. The problem with .eu as a ccTLD is that the countries forming the EU also have their ccTLDs and they are massively stronger than .eu ccTLD with Germany being the top ccTLD in the world at the moment. (The .cn ccTLD dropped about 3.9M domains since December and is back around the 9M mark now. It may drop again as the effects of new .cn registration rules kick in.)

If you care about it or not, that's totally up to you but, again, suggestions that it's only popular in Eastern Europe are not quite correct, to say the least.

Much of the growth in .eu over the last year or so has been from the Eastern EU states where the .eu is beginning to overtake .com as the second choice TLD. Just to explain the concept of domain choice: in a mature market, the first choice domain is the ccTLD. The second choice is typically .com. These two TLDs tend to lead the market in registrations in these countries. The .net, .org (typically the third choice TLDs) and .info/biz (typically fourth choice) are down the list of choices. The registration volume is concentrated around the ccTLD and com.

Since its open launch 4 years ago,

And that was one complete clusterf*ck of an operation that has been used by every new gTLD ever since as an example in how not to do things.

I kept an eye on it and my understanding is that the German and Dutch are not less interested in it than the Poles and Czechs. I'm not even suggesting to check EURid figures which you know better than me, it is based on my personal data.

There was a boost in .eu figure in December 2009-February 2010 from IDNs (accent type domains). The last time I checked, most .eu domains were unused, parked with PPC advertising or just brand protection registrations. There was very little natural development. From the launch of .eu in 2005, there has been a massive growth in ccTLDs and EU ccTLDs have also grown accordingly. These figures below are for .eu on the first of each month.

First Of Month - Germany - Holland - Ireland - UK - Poland - Czech
| Dec2006 | 739296 | 288705 | 29976 | 420313 | 65682 | 45168 |
| Dec2007 | 854080 | 359122 | 27432 | 366268 | 98607 | 57104 |
| Dec2008 | 900640 | 403580 | 58937 | 366933 | 169424 | 75669 |
| Dec2009 | 934487 | 424638 | 50879 | 320100 | 171937 | 87896 |
| Apr2010 | 994804 | 437283 | 51312 | 327512 | 191068 | 111089 |

At the end of March 2010, the .de ccTLD had approximately 13,554,590 domains. That make the German .eu figure (01/April/2010) roughly 7.34% of the ccTLD. Germany would have another 5M or so com/net/org/biz/info domains.

The .nl ccTLD had approximately 3,809,210 domains at the end of March 2010. That's approximately 11.48% of the .nl ccTLD. Netherlands has a number of direct navigation sites that have high .eu figures. Netherlands would have about 1.5M com/net/org/biz/info domains.

The .ie count on 01/April/2010 was 142721. That would make the "Irish" .eu percentage 35.95% of .ie ccTLD. However a number of cyberwarehouser operations (Dotster and Ultsearch) are using Irish front companies and this artificially boosts that percentage. Ireland would have around 142K com/net/org/biz/info domains.

The .uk ccTLD had 8,413,958 domains at the end of March 2010. The UK's .eu percentage is approximately 3.9%. A number of US/Canadian cyberwarehousers use UK front companies. The UK would have around 4M com/net/org/biz/info domains.

The .pl ccTLD had approximately 1,769,142 domains at the end of March 2010. That puts Poland's .eu percentage at approximately 10.8% of ccTLD. Poland would have approximately 287K com/net/org/biz/info (probably more).

The .cz ccTLD had approximately 671426 domains at the end of March 2010. That puts the Czech Republic's .eu at 16.54% of its ccTLD figure. The Czech Republic would have approximately 230K com/net/org/biz/info domains (again probably more).

All of the above countries have domain footprints in com/net/org/biz/info/mobi which would push the .eu percentage down when they are taken into consideration.

To sum it up, taking into account its age and niche, .eu is doing pretty well.

Most people, you included perhaps, make the mistake of trying to gauge the success of .eu ccTLD as a single entity. The reality is that .eu is a regional ccTLD with a set of country level markets where .eu is competing with the local ccTLD and the com/net/org/biz/info/mobi/me TLDs. In terms of growth, the main EU countries have reached a mature market phase but there is still a lot of growth left in the Eastern EU countries and it is in these countries that .eu has the best chance to replace .com as the second choice domain. The older EU countries have almost all gone ccTLD positive (more ccTLD domains than com/net/org/biz/info/mobi domains registered in that country). The older EU countries are mature markets whereas the Eastern EU countries are at an earlier stage of their development. This is why .eu has a far greater opportunity for rapid growth in the Eastern EU countries. The growth in the older EU countries does not have quite the same possibility of replacing .com due to its legacy market share. The Eastern EU countries don't have quite the same level of legacy .com registrations.

The problem for .eu is that it has been very poorly marketed. It is also largely undeveloped. In Ireland, for example, the main ccTLDs are .ie and .uk with .com and .net TLDs having a legacy share of the market. There are very few Irish websites advertised with a .eu branding. The damage that Eurid and the botched Sunrise and Landrush phases did to .eu ccTLD will take years to filter out of the ccTLD. Had .eu been run, initially, by a more competent registry and the regulatory framework been drafted by a competent panel of people, the .eu could have been so much more.

Regards...jmcc