.INFO Is The Most Widely Understood Domain

[LUISGUSTAVONY]

INFO Is The Most Widely Understood Domain
By DomainPeople, Inc. Print | Email

.COM may be the most widely used extension in the world, but .INFO has the distinction of being the most widely understood extension in the world.

Whether it’s short for informationen in German, información in Spanish, or le informazioni in Italian, the word “info” is understood as short for information in over 35 languages around the world. It’s not surprising then that the .INFO domain is quickly becoming the global standard by which people are surfing the Internet to find more information on people, companies, or products and services.

.INFO is the first truly global domain as it’s intuitive, easy to use and universally recognized. It allows businesses, marketers, individuals and organizations to easily reach a worldwide audience with information about themselves or their business. Most importantly, it’s still much easier to get the .INFO domain name that people actually want, especially if the .COM version has already been taken.

Many companies are capitalizing on this opportunity. An Interbrand/BusinessWeek study found that nearly 70% of the world’s most valuable brands have already registered a .INFO domain name. Also, companies are registering .INFO domains for more than just brand protection. They are using these domains to create websites that communicate important information to their customers.

“The Internet is about information, and the .INFO domain makes it easier to find it”, says Robert Birkner, General Manager for DomainPeople. “Initially it was mainly domain speculators and large companies registering .INFO domains. But, with recent low price specials on this extension, we’re starting to get a lot more interest from individual consumers, small business owners, etc. registering .INFO domains so that they can share information about themselves and their products with the rest of the world.”

Many domain registrars have been offering specials on .INFO to help increase the extension’s profile. The strategy is paying off. There are currently well over 3 million .INFO domains worldwide and on its current trajectory, the extension is poised to challenge .ORG for the number three position behind .COM and .NET. Recent high profile sales of .INFO domains have also helped to increase the demand for this domain. Casino.info and camping.info recently fetched just over $35,000 and $28,000 US earlier this year; creditcard.info just sold for $20,000.

It seems as though the word is finally out on .INFO

 

[cyberair]

Thanks for your article. I am for .INFO domains as well, but have to point out something that I am against of:

Many domain registrars have been offering specials on .INFO to help increase the extension’s profile. The strategy is paying off. There are currently well over 3 million .INFO domains worldwide and on its current trajectory, the extension is poised to challenge .ORG for the number three position behind .COM and .NET. Recent high profile sales of .INFO domains have also helped to increase the demand for this domain. Casino.info and camping.info recently fetched just over $35,000 and $28,000 US earlier this year; creditcard.info just sold for $20,000.

I've written a post in my blog and it goes against the policy of keeping .INFO so cheap. This strategy, in order to artificially increase the number of registrations has only opened the door for a SPAM harvesting extension. .INFO is bleeding from that wound. Below, my reaction to .INFO and the pricing strategy from Afilias:

.INFO Quality - then Quantity

The .info extension is still regarded by many as a SPAM extension. However, .info is also used by many for what it suggests - an information website. The question is, why has .info received the association of being a SPAM extension. The answer lies in the strategy from Afilias to reach high number of registrations by lowering registration costs to pennies. This strategy has been one of the worst moves for the extension and for the web in general. A regular .com registration is about $9 per year. Other extensions follow right along, except for .info offered many times for less than $1. For anyone building a website, $9 per year is an insignificant and highly affordable price. Now, for a spammer who has to run a complicated network of dozens, maybe even thousands of websites with individual domains that regularly get banned by other networks and search engines, $9 per domain gets very very expensive. Here is where .INFO comes to the rescue of spammers. At less than $1, spamming the internet through vast amounts of domains becomes much more cost-effective, mathematically speaking - 9 times more cost-effective.

The solution for the rebirth of .INFO is to raise prices, perhaps even higher than the $9 for a .com. Why would .INFO charge more than a .com? Easy, because there are far more great .INFO domains available for registration than there are .coms. I am not suggesting a ridiculous $100 registration, but $12 or $15 is very reasonable for a one year registration. At this point, a huge curve downwards for .INFO registrations will begin and it will be like the death of all those spamming parasites that have leeched to the .INFO extension. Little by little new life will begin to emerge. Solid information websites will begin to adopt the .INFO extension and the rest will follow. More countries will adopt what Spain and Austria have done with the .INFO extension which is the abbreviation for “Information” in more than 25 languages.

http://blog.rafaelsosa.com/2007/04/03/info-quality-then-quantity/

 

[cyf]

I totally agree with that: ".info" are going to be very strong in the near future! (BTW, I don't want to start a flame war, but to me, ".info" will be far more valuable than ".mobi" will ever be...)

Concerning registration prices, you may be right: dropping prices is not a very good idea. Still, I'm not sure about the "spam argument". A quick look at my spam mail folder tells me that about 70% of spams I receive come from ".com". The remaining are from ".biz" or ccTLDs, but almost none from ".info" (I receive about 300 spams a day...).

--

http://nanodomainnames.com - Nanotechnology names for sale

 

[DomainingCom]

Most understood, I do not know.
But most advertised in DNF sure!

In NP its' .mobi the most advertised.
I guess this is due to the fact there is still a good amount of unregistered names and buying demand is low.
So domainers with low budget are able to grab acceptable names or buy names in the aftermarket without spending a fortune.

On my hand I see end user buying demand is +80% for the dot com
So buy other extensions for resell purpose is play the lottery.

 

[gpmgroup]

newspaper.info just sold at sedo for $18,000

There are over 4,250,000 .info's now and .info is growing faster than .org

Last week there was a net increase of 30,000 .info's compared with 7,600 .orgs and 8,100 .biz

 

[Bill Roy]

Sales of .info

2007

CreditCard.info...................$25,500
Newspaperinfo...................$18,000
Names.info........................$10,465
Rental.info..........................$7,000

2006

NewYork.info.....................$46,392
Credit.info.........................$36,000
Casino.info........................$35,127
Camping.info......................$28,100
New-York.info....................$22,405
CreditCard.info...................$20,000
Racing.info........................$18,000
Nevada.info.......................$13,162
Physician.info.....................$10,500
Detroit.info........................$10,000

The sale of CreditCard.info in 2007 shows a 25% increase on that paid in 2006, although just an isolated statistic it seems to be broadly in line with increase of domains generally.

Also of note is the NewYork.info and New-York.info sales, at $46,392 and $22,405 would indicate that a hyphen approximately halves the value of such a prime Geo name.

 

[DomainingCom]

2007 sales

3 parked domains
1 marketer domain

So 0 end users domains sold.

And sold for prices +10 times under the dot com version.

...

I did not deeply check 2006 domains sold.
But it look likes the same: parked domains, marketers domains, scrapper domains and one developed domain (camping).

...

So it look likes dot info it still not a hot extension for end users.

...

 

[Theo]

The growth factor of .info has nothing to do with quality but as someone pointed out, the sheer price drop or even free giveaway of .info domains has created tens of thousands of "freebies". It's naive to believe that .info has a standing of its own without the prefix - the keyword - being of quality. It's the same fallacy that .mobi preachers promote.

 

[Argie]

The growth factor of .info has nothing to do with quality but as someone pointed out, the sheer price drop or even free giveaway of .info domains has created tens of thousands of "freebies". It's naive to believe that .info has a standing of its own without the prefix - the keyword - being of quality. It's the same fallacy that .mobi preachers promote.

I Agree...

 

[mudi]

I just Sold a .Info (Broker) for a good price aswell!I dont think the buyer or the seller wanted to disclose it!
but yeah great Sale!

 

[cyberair]

I am a believer of .INFO's value and I agree that .INFOs at this moment is way below their value. However, in several conferences that I've attended in Silicon Valley and in Boston, the general sentiment of webmasters (not domainers) is that .INFO is an insignificant extension usually associated with SPAM.
Furthermore, (and I am not sure this is true) sites like Technorati block domains with .INFO extensions by default.

Perhaps, in order to increase awareness of .INFO as a serious solution for an information website, prime .INFO holders that have developed their domain(s) should unite and do a ROS banner campaign across all high quality .INFOs developed for branding purposes. I would participate in a non-for-profit movement like this that has a ratio of 1-to-1.

If anyone is interested, I can volunteer to setup the system. However, we should at least have 25 to 50 properties.

 

[jpf1000]

great posts

very good information

thanks

 

[Bill Roy]

Cyberair, great suggestion. I have no developed sites at the moment but this along with the geographic .info group being set up via this forum is just what is needed to get .info going. It may not have the sudden impact of the $millions spent pushing .mobi but it is the very best that can be done by domainers.

Good luck

 

[PRED]

I am a believer of .INFO's value and I agree that .INFOs at this moment is way below their value. However, in several conferences that I've attended in Silicon Valley and in Boston, the general sentiment of webmasters (not domainers) is that .INFO is an insignificant extension usually associated with SPAM.
Furthermore, (and I am not sure this is true) sites like Technorati block domains with .INFO extensions by default.

Perhaps, in order to increase awareness of .INFO as a serious solution for an information website, prime .INFO holders that have developed their domain(s) should unite and do a ROS banner campaign across all high quality .INFOs developed for branding purposes. I would participate in a non-for-profit movement like this that has a ratio of 1-to-1.

If anyone is interested, I can volunteer to setup the system. However, we should at least have 25 to 50 properties.

welcome aboard :smilewinkgrin:
here's the thread that may interest you
http://www.dnforum.com/showthread.php?t=198548
we need all the help we can get
hopefully commence project in 6 weeks so if anyone has anymore quality geo info's....... list them

 

[gpmgroup]

... in several conferences that I've attended in Silicon Valley and in Boston, the general sentiment of webmasters (not domainers) is that .INFO is an insignificant extension usually associated with SPAM.

The US has a very low ratio of .info to other extensions.

In Eastern Europe there are often more .info's registered than .net's and .org's

www.chart.info/stats18.htm

 

[DomainingCom]

I don't know the reason but it's true that dot info is often associated with spam and mainly scrapper sites.
For example at StopBounce.com we have a bunch of members running scrapper sites and most of them are using dot info.
They are mainly China individual and companies with dot info english names/content.
Is the dot info a cheap extension?

 

[Bill Roy]

Cybertonic, at the moment .info's can be regged for $0.99 + $0.22 fee (total $1.21). So yes .info's are a cheap ext.

 

[DomainingCom]

Then don't look further Bilbo.
At this rate I understand why it was and it's the prefered extension of spammers, site scrappers, ...

 

[cyberair]

welcome aboard :smilewinkgrin:
here's the thread that may interest you
http://www.dnforum.com/showthread.php?t=198548
we need all the help we can get
hopefully commence project in 6 weeks so if anyone has anymore quality geo info's....... list them

Predator, what you guys are doing with geo .info is exactly what will increase the worth of .info domains. Thanks for the invitation. I, however, have prime .info domains that aren't geo related, although I expect to make geo subdomains of them.

 

[Bill Roy]

Cyberair, I have 'good' (not prime) geo .info's, all 50 US States and have just decided to develop them in a slightly novel way ( and I literally mean just decided).

Hope to have a few up by the end of the week.


Cybertonic, you know me well enough to know I love a challenge! :smilewinkgrin:

Let's see in a month's time if I can get these sites to start growing organically (without buying traffic I mean).