Why these 50+ businesses dumped their .com for a new top level domain” takes a look at several businesses that have ditched their .com or country code in favor of a new gtld.
AnimalHealthAssociates.org switched to AHA.vet, I get that one a short easy to remember name where the extension represents your profession. AHA.com would not be attainable so this is not bad imo.
Bresse.Fr switched to Bresse.healthcare, if they are only operating in France I think the .fr is the better play, shorter and healthcare is an English word. If they are looking to expand then the healthcare may make sense but I would run two sites one for France and the other for the rest of the world.
Christoper did a nice job and it is worth checking out, the article can also be used as a nice reference point for those trying to sell new gtlds. When a prospect asks who is switching to the new gtlds you will have a nice article to refer them to.
Read the full article here
It’s misleading. Those businesses keep their old domain names. None of them will drop. There are just and only short alternatives and marketing tools.
Indeed, it is misleading to imply that each of the businesses “dumped” their .COM – and not only because many of them are retaining a separate .COM website or forwarding the .COM domain to their new nTLD domain (or vic versa) … but also because 22 of these 51 cases do not involve .COM at all. Instead, the rebrands / spinoffs are toward an nTLD from the following non-.COM gTLDs and ccTLDs:
.AT
.CO
.CO.NZ
.CO.UK (6 times)
.CO.ZA
.COM.AU (twice)
.ES
.FR (twice)
.ME.UK
.NET (twice)
.ORG (twice)
.ORG.UK (twice)
So that’s definitely a “teaser” headline, which can’t be taken literally.
But it’s also no objection really to point out that the domains haven’t been dropped. It’s to be expected that the old domains will remain registered and even in use. That’s standard practice for rebrands. Even upgrading from one .COM to another, a company might want to retain the old domain.
Regardless, it’s a very informative list. Thanks, Christopher, for putting it together.
Some domain changes look like improvements – Driftaway.coffee (compared to Driftaway.co) or Sport.Wales (versus SportWales.org.uk) each have their advantages. And I quite like the AHA.vet rebrand as well as Triple.Care (from ESNFPatientCare.com) and TheGreen.Diet (as opposed to TallaBajaDiet.com) … even though I’d be concerned about the unrelated company using TripleCare.com as their website … and the price tag on TheGreenDiet.com, which is held by BuyDomains.
Many of the domain transformations go from mediocre to mediocre, in my opinion. And 1 at least seems like a move from good to bad – from Sportex.com to the cumbersome LondonSportExchange.com.
Dumbfoundingly foolish, though, was leaving 24 of the corresponding .COM domains unregistered. I won’t register any of those, but I daresay cybersquatters will.
They will soon realize that they are adding the word “dot” to their brands and switch from new subdomains to the “dot” less.
Ngtlds are good for personal websites and marketing campains like #tags but not for branding!
I won’t trust a .bank more than a .ws
Why does the headline claim they “dumped their .com” I tried the first six and their old .com worked). Nothing drumped here. So you want to go to Barclays and their new domain is so memorable? Lets see is it bank.barklays, or barclays.bank, or barkays.finance, or barklays.money, barclays.website, barklays.london?
Thanks for sharing. Dumped doesn’t mean that they have expired the old domain name, but it has been replaced as the official web address. I noticed during my research that wherher or not to change domain can be niche dependant. Especially creatives are very open to changing to TLDs such as .agency or .design Also, for some TLDs the quality usage is very low. When you’re investing try to skim through the Google results for site:.tld and you will get a good sense, if it’s popular or not.
Yeah despite Christopher’s clarification, “dumping” is misleading and I checked all sites, some or few redirect to the nTLDs, rest have both operational. IMO they are trying to hedge and also protect their “brand or address”.
We have seen so many challenges implementing and launching sites on nTLDs that we have heavily invested in COMS since those nTLD experiments have not paid off. After an initial spurt in Google rankings for EMDs we disappeared.
Again quality EMD nTLDs with logical extensions are still great long term value, we will continue to invest in them, but possibly hold off on developing them for now.