Comments

1. Furkat says

   September 7, 2010 at 11:15 am

   I do not really understand the hype around .CO domain names. They have been in the domain market for a number of years. I remember it was used by Colombia University at some point.

   I do not believe that .CO will make it this time either despite so much money was invested in marketing and advertisement of this extension. It is all about registrars business nowadays.

   Why someone would use .co when he can use .com (or more common extentions such .net .org or .asia .eu .me .tv)

   This is the biggest waste of money for domain investors.

   Cheers.

2. Em says

   September 7, 2010 at 11:30 am

   Interesting findings. It’s clear that .co has its own legs, no doubt. That’s more or less intuitive. But perhaps a little early to be doing this kind of study with limited samples. Albeit, it looks pretty good for the .co.

3. Robert Cline says

   September 7, 2010 at 11:35 am

   The bottom line is what we already all know:

   .Co Study: “There Is A Good Potential In The TLD”

   Surprising to see so many sites up in just one month. Although there are a few still not on the list like developed.CO

4. Kikonja says

   September 7, 2010 at 11:37 am

   Great post , keep posting i will bookmark now !

5. ::: could BreakingNewsBlog.us become a record selling .us domain??? ::: says

   September 7, 2010 at 11:47 am

   “There Is A Good Potential In The TLD”

   ???

   godaddy.co just redirects to godaddy.com while (e.g.) facebook.co and google.co redirect to… NOTHING

   as I’ve said in the early days of the .co-mania, many (small and big) .co buyers register them just to avoid the typosquatting, but, after, not even redirect the domains to their .com sites!

   .

6. Ron W. says

   September 7, 2010 at 11:55 am

   Nice post! Out of the few least obvious names that I checked on whois, they appear to be owned by different owners.

7. Deke says

   September 7, 2010 at 11:55 am

   IMO…..a couple of years or so and it’ll look like .tv or .info. …..even if there are some very successful sites on them.

8. Robert Cline says

   September 7, 2010 at 11:58 am

   .CO already has 2x twice the number of registrations than .tv and .info combined in the first month.

9. Am says

   September 7, 2010 at 12:10 pm

   Chinese love NNN.co – no suprise to see 156.co up on that list

   BTW: 156.co – Traffic Rank in CN: 4,245

10. Robert Cline says

    September 7, 2010 at 12:12 pm

    4. Newsflash — .CO is currently used in 60 countries as part of their TLD — E.G. Angloa – co.ao, United Kingdom – .co.uk, Zimbabwe – .co.zw, etc. So it is not a stretch for these countries to fully embrace and adapt .CO — a newer, shorter, less complicated version of their current extension.

11. ::: could BreakingNewsBlog.us become a record selling .us domain??? ::: says

    September 7, 2010 at 12:14 pm

    “.CO already has 2x twice the number of registrations than .tv and .info combined in the first month.”

    too easy… 🙂

    and (maybe) the .co are ten times the .name 🙂

    .

12. Meyer says

    September 7, 2010 at 12:15 pm

    Cline,
    It is a poor example to compare the number of .info’s reg’d
    in the first month of its launch compared to the first month
    of .co. That was 8 yrs ago.

    How many .com were reg’d when .com was initially available
    for registration?

    If you want to arrive at a better correlation and to do it
    properly, compare the number of .com reg’d when .info was
    launched. And, the number of .com reg’d when .co was launched.

    But, I’m sure that would not want work to your benefit.

13. ::: could BreakingNewsBlog.us become a record selling .us domain??? ::: says

    September 7, 2010 at 12:22 pm

    did will see a .co-like “.SO fever” the next November 1st?

14. Meyer says

    September 7, 2010 at 12:35 pm

    Using zooknic and hosterstats, I picked up the following data.
    Don’t have the .co data. I’m sure others do.

    Dec, 2001 (first month displaying .info data)
    .info 641,111
    .com 23,198,677
    .info/.com = 2.8%

    Aug, 2010
    .co ?
    .com 81,400,672
    .co/.com = %

15. ::: could BreakingNewsBlog.us become a record selling .us domain??? ::: says

    September 7, 2010 at 12:40 pm

    Aug, 2010
    .co about 500,000
    .com 81,400,672
    .co/.com = about 0.6%

16. todaro says

    September 7, 2010 at 1:03 pm

    are you just running out of things to blog about or do you have a serious finacial interest in .co? just askin’?

17. MHB says

    September 7, 2010 at 1:11 pm

    Todaro

    Don’t own any part of the .co registry and make not a dime when I write about them.

    However, it remains by far the hottest story in the domain world.

18. LS Morgan (Not Morgan Linton) says

    September 7, 2010 at 1:12 pm

    This ‘study’ proves that too many .com names are being squandered in an productive fashion. Basically, you could do the same with developed websites any other TLD and you would come up with much the same result; the eponymous .com is parked, or undeveloped.

    Obviously, this means that .COM IS DEAD!
    .CO IS THE FUTURE!

    lol

    A more telling study on the marketing efficacy of .co would be to wait some time, then see how many brands are developed on .co, where the .com is available to register, or owned by the same party who’s redirecting it to their .co presence.

    Hint: there won’t be many, if any.

19. LS Morgan (Not Morgan Linton) says

    September 7, 2010 at 1:13 pm

    ‘unproductive’ not ‘productive’.

20. Joe says

    September 7, 2010 at 2:14 pm

    When comparing number of .INFO and .CO registrations within the first month, let’s not forget that .CO’s can’t be registered for less than $25-$30, which isn’t cheap at all. I don’t know what the average registration fee for .INFO was, but this factor absolutely has to be taken into account for a more objective comparison.

21. Uzoma says

    September 7, 2010 at 2:20 pm

    I am trading valuable .COM for exchange with .CO
    If you own a dotCO, contact me and I will trade you my premium .COM for it. I will trade about 200 names, so hurry before they are all gone. Your .CO must be valuable like my .COM, and I will be the judge of that.

    Thanks

22. Robert Cline says

    September 7, 2010 at 3:17 pm

    Uzoma,

    what is your email address or how do I get in touch with you?

    Let’s see if we can help each other.

23. Robert Cline says

    September 7, 2010 at 3:25 pm

    It seems people that were hedging and waiting off on buying .CO s are now feeling more comfortable buying .CO s which only means higher and more .CO registrations.

24. Slate says

    September 7, 2010 at 3:32 pm

    I limited my .CO registrations to 12 but I think they are good, strong, solid domains and worth the few dollars that I paid for them.

    But that is just my opinion.

    Cheers

25. Oops, did it again pet. says

    September 7, 2010 at 4:47 pm

    Potential.

    Domainer, I am not. Website builder, SEO expert, I am certainly not. I am a scientist running a small biotech company along with others. When we started the company 2 years or so ago we did what many do and made up a word, the word that we still have to spell out to our customers today, everyday – an example of an oops I suppose. We would have jumped at a good .com, but for us there was nothing we felt happy with, nothing within 50,000 USD as it happens.

    So I received the offer of protecting our brand.co recently, and confused it with the many offers we have had from Asia regarding companies apparently trying to register our brand name in .whatever, to which I always replied, “just let them have it” – I am not completely dumb, not entirely. Then, just by chance, late one night, I happened across a Go Daddy advert, or the Go Daddy girl, one or the other, something took my interest. I searched for our big keyword – gone. I searched for the next – gone. Then I searched for a simple string of keywords, also gone. What the hell I thought, who is paying good cash to do that, in our little area of science.

    From that moment, I did what I do best, and jumped in, protecting what was left of “my” domain space. I have jumped in all my life, and 8 times out of ten, it is expensive and embarrassing, but my way has worked to date on balance, so I just cite that fact and do it again and again…and again.

    The point.

    Thus to an average business person like me, who knows nothing to speak about, and apart from populating my site with additional copy every now and again to keep google happy, knows nowt about it whatsoever, .co is something I would have used 2 years ago, would it have been around. .net – no, .asia – I am not, .org – I need money, .mobi – thats not biology, .us – I don’t work there, .tv – come on, .eu – why would a global company do that, .co.uk – I am proud to be British, but have no idea where my revenue is coming from, only that 90 % of it is going to be from somewhere else.

    So that is what happened to me. Now I just have to work out what to do with approx. 80 .cos that are single keyword domains, when I subsequently learned from this kind of blog, that domain farms are out of fashion – thats a 2000 USD oops again (one I can afford though, just the beauty of suffering to do what I do best).

    Finally.

    This is a serious (Cline) question for one of you who knows – I have a big tomorrow kind of green keyword. The .com is for sale. We made serious enquiries, and got no where with negotiations, the line being drawn in the sand at 50,000 USD. Our .co cost 19 quid (19 GBP), say 30 USD for most of you guys. The .com is not developed and is parked (I think that is the term, loads of almost perfect links, but none perfect scientifically).

    We are not, but what if we did build a brand around the .co. We thought about it seriously actually. Of course, the .com could come along and eclipse us in a nano second, as some would claim, but in the interim, what happens to the .com domain price. A serious business person, like me, would no longer go within a mile of the thing for the same 50,000 USD. I am genuinely, and not at all trying to Cline you, asking why holders of adamant 50,000 USD + .com domains have not protected the possibility (i.e. over the next 12 months, for 30 bucks – now taking artistic license, sorry), of .co spoiling their game. At the end of tghe day, if you are strategically placed enough to turn down 10,000 USD for a .com, surely you are good for 30 USD to avert a situation developing out of your easy control. Seriously, that is a question in my head, not a subliminal message picked up from our Rob.

    Nice talking, thanks.

26. Uzoma says

    September 7, 2010 at 5:15 pm

    Hi Cline,

    I can be contacted via my Blog at http://www.domainxing.blog.com or simply clicking on my name, which does the same thing (taking you to my blog). I’ve already initiated some deals with readers of this blog, so if the trading partner (s) agree, we will post updates. Cheers.

    Thanks

27. Uzoma says

    September 7, 2010 at 5:17 pm

    Ooops! wrote down wrong URL:

    Correction- http://domainxing.blogspot.com/
    (if the editor can correct my URL in prior post, this can be deleted)
    Thanks

28. Abubaker says

    September 7, 2010 at 6:00 pm

    For me, .co came to the rescue. I have booked alattas.co as alattas is my family name, all .com, .net, .org are taken .com was offered for $10,000. I have been using attasonline.com as a last/best option for 6 years now even better than .ws .info or .me. But now i got the .co which I think is far much better than the alternate XXXXonline.com or other .info or so domains. Now i have moved everything to my new .co domain and redirected my alternate .com to the new/potential .co domain.

29. LS Morgan (Not Morgan Linton) says

    September 7, 2010 at 7:13 pm

    I am genuinely, and not at all trying to Cline you, asking why holders of adamant 50,000 USD + .com domains have not protected the possibility (i.e. over the next 12 months, for 30 bucks – now taking artistic license, sorry), of .co spoiling their game
    ——————————–

    Because .co isn’t a game spoiler. If someone has a significant online presence, it and .cm are probably worth it as a defensive play to capture their typo traffic, but aside from that, not so much. The reason .com owners aren’t all that concerned about .co would be similar to the reason that a Formula 1 driver wouldn’t be too concerned when challenged to a road rally by a man on horseback. There’s nothing about that man which poses any threat. He could set world-record time for a horseman… It still doesn’t change the race itself.

    Admittedly, one area where domainers fail is overvaluing the importance of a domain name, as it pertains to an e-venture. This is because so many of them are totally inexperienced with building. Outside of the top handful of industry defining descriptive .coms (Cars.com, Pizza.com, Tools.com, Guns.com, Mortgages.com, GolfClubs.com, Candy.com and the like) the difference in consumer perception between PizzaWorld.com and PizzaLand.com is negligible at best, even though domainers will engage in pedant conversations about the minutiae of either, insisting that one is really better than the other- much of it usually reliant on google metrics or whatever Estibot says.

    When you get into other TLDs aside from .com or a widely accepted ccTLD, you’re in an entirely world and that world is the 3rd world of domain names. It might not be rational that .com has attained the preeminence it has, but nevertheless, it has. Might this change over time, with the release of unlimited TLDs and ICANNs commoditization of the space to the right of the dot? Perhaps, over time, but .com will probably remain the most desirable global brand, even if its preeminence diminishes a bit, 20, 30, 40 years down the line.

    I wish .co buyers the best. I wish .co developers particular good fortune, in that I’m always a supporter of productive development. It’s just so much more lucrative than the passive methods of monetization. The ones I wish the most success are the .co owners who are developing (and marketing) keywords that I might own in .com.

30. Simon Charnock says

    September 8, 2010 at 5:31 am

    @LS

    Thanks, I see all of that, but take my recent experience. The .com domain name in question has not been developed, basically because the underlying science is not producing energy economically yet, and thus no company is willing to pay the 50 K to secure it. However, the holder knows the technology is round the corner, and thus it is “just” a matter of holding on.

    However, say a small company, one developing technology for that industry sets up shop in the interim, and decides to take the .co rather than .com, as the spare 50 K would come in very handy, and they decide that their products are what is going to attract customers, rather than a great domain name. Don’t forget, there are many non-consumer related companies, they are companies where the customers know how to find what they want, and with only a handfull of suppliers in the world, then who cares about what their website looks like, or how good SEO has been done, or if it says .co or .com. When buying technical products, the guy serving the web looks at technical content, and when he sees the depth he is happy with, he will buy based on that.

    So lets not debate if this will happen, lets just say it does happen (in this case). So I realise the .com domain is still very valuable, but are you trying to tell me it is still worth the same 50 K? The exact domain name has now been established as a commercial brand? Fair enough, not a mega global brand that the technology deserves, and will have one day, but the exact domain name brand is out there, held by a company supplying into the same market. You see, a company would not want to have another, already established company, in their field, with the same name. Thus they would go for another name, and not buy the 50 K .com domain name, they would buy another 50 K .com of course, but what happens to the first .com? Does it lose 10 K, 20 K, 30 K, it must lose something, and that something is certainly much greater than 30 USD?

    We are not talking about sex.com and sex.co here, we are in a small area of non-consumer commerce, as are the vast majority of domain names I imagine.

    I just look at .co as a potential destructive technology in the above situations. Domainers always seem to be focussed on consumer related domain names, as that is where they understand the product, and can get innovative with adding value. There are lots of guys like me out there, who a domain name is a very small aspect of their business, and as aspirations of .coms don’t come into for them, if they think globally, why would .co not look attractive, afterall, we know nothing, are easy to sell, and are in love with physical products, nothing else!

31. Em says

    September 8, 2010 at 7:51 am

    Simon,

    I agree for the most part. IDNs must also be taken into consideration. The more .idn extensions coming out all over the world, the less likely people will perceive .com as the “necessary” extension.

    Abubaker is the perfect example and prototype situation of .com emigration: no availability, so go look for availability to get what you wanted, exactly. I feel this will happen even more when .idns come out all over the world. Most people feel most comfortable with their mother tongue and this is fact. It’s a little bit ethnocentric to perceive .com as THE “Global Brand”.

    And don’t forget, when .com came out, people really had no choice about which extension they could have. There is much more choice coming and .co has a nice firm place in the marketshare.

32. David the lynx says

    September 12, 2010 at 3:04 pm

    The numbers on the .info registrations provided are inaccurate.

    Can’t remember exactly what they were but they’re not the number provided.

33. tv izle says

    September 24, 2010 at 4:05 am

    I don’t know what the average registration fee for .INFO was, but this factor absolutely has to be taken into account for a more objective comparison.

34. googleTv says

    October 16, 2010 at 1:54 am

    thank you mf