.info traffic loss

its a sampling thing I guess - if a certain percentage of internet users are very inexperienced and a percentage of them perform a certain action you can interpolate that for the remainder of the sample set - in exactly the same way that market research sites do when presenting trend data.

 

[DomeBase]

Originally posted by safesys
its a sampling thing I guess - if a certain percentage of internet users are very inexperienced and a percentage of them perform a certain action you can interpolate that for the remainder of the sample set - in exactly the same way that market research sites do when presenting trend data.

It is a sampling thing. In order for the sampling thing to work, the sample must be unbiased -- representative of the whole population.

Do you think that the population of people who try to reach mta.info by typing it in or clicking on a link is the same as the population of people who try to find it using a search engine? My guess would be no.

By analogy, do you think that people who drive to 1200 Main Street North without asking directions are the same as people who stop at a gas station to ask directions to "1200 Main" (but are not exactly sure whether it is street, north, or what)? My guess would be no.

The folks who get where they want to go without assistance tend to be better informed than the (clueless) who ask for assistance. I bet the people who stop at the gas station are more likely to be confused between "1200 Main" North and "1200 Main" South than people who get where they want to go without any trouble. In fact, maybe it is precisely confused people who do go to the gas station?

If this is true, then sampling leakage through Overture to draw conclusions about total traffic could greatly overestimate leakage.
I could be wrong. Any actual data on these concepts?

 

[DomeBase]

Originally posted by snoopy
actually overture has just updated so I thought I'd post up some stats with some other related searches also,

mta.com 11420
mta.net 4150 -they own the .net
mta.info 3491
mta.org 781
mta.info.com 621
mtainfo.com 213
mta.inf 74

Even among the sub-population who ask for directions, the above statistics might not tell the whole story. How about people who just type in "MTA"? Based on the following, 85,426 did. Would they wind up at MTA.info? If so, doesn't that make the denominator for calculating percentage leakage to .com much larger and the percentage leakage smaller?

"Searches done in July 2002
Count Search Term
85426 mta
4942 nyc mta
3549 mta los angeles
3429 new york mta
3391 mta nyc
3053 mta new york"

If this line of reasoning is correct, then even of that sub-population who have to stop to ask directions, only around 1/8th seek MTA.com? If this sub-population is less well-informed concerning domain names than the overall population seeking MTA's site, then the overall percentage leakage could be less -- 1/10th? 1/20th? Hard to tell.

I am open to alternative interpretations of this data and reasoning.

 

[bidawinner]

Fortunently 90% of all traffic is through the search engines and most are finding the MTA (metropoliton Transit Authority ) of their flavor at :

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q=mta

Here we find :

.net
.org
.us
.ca
.hu
.tr

ALL on the front page..

so much for .com

I would suspect that will will find as the months pass by more bookmarking of these extensions =(type-ins) as people find what they are looking for and they see it printed on tickets and train terminals and bus stops etc......

 

I think what is clear from the data above is that traffic leakage from the .info (to .com) appears to be much higher than the traffic loss that .net and .org sites can expect.

 

[DomeBase]

Yep. That makes sense... at this time anyway. Let's keep an eye on the trends... to see if/when those graph lines might intersect

 

[bidawinner]

I think it's extremely clear that .com dosent even matter considering any information that the searchers are looking for can be found at:

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q=mta

Here we find :

.net
.org
.us
.ca
.hu
.tr

ALL on the front page being used with "MTA"..it seems webmasters are saying screw bidding for an over-inflated .com ..I can use any extension I want...and you know ..they are !

You can talk about "leakage" all you want but if you want information on "MTA" the coverage is vast in all extensions ..

 

interesting there is no mta.info on the first page of the search results.

bringing search engine "term" searches into this is a red herring as it has nothing to do with recall from offline marketing (where the vast majority of marketing spend takes place).

The stats speak for themselves with regard to recall and leakage for real corporate promotion of this tld.

 

[mole]

This specific example is a little ironical. mta.info's mass publicity efforts leaks traffic to a 404 error .com page.

The dotcom namespace is full of such unproductive examples - 404, Parking Pages, PPC Search, redirects.. So natural/random type-ins often lead to unsatisfied user expectations.

No wonder search engines are becoming such a favored option today.

I have no doubt that Afilias was behind promoting MTA to adopt the name for publicity purposes. Nonetheless, MTA.info is a very good example of relevant addressing in specific contexts. It's got a very consumer friendly "Yes! This is what I need!" ring about it.

 

[DomeBase]

Originally posted by safesys
bringing search engine "term" searches into this is a red herring as it has nothing to do with recall from offline marketing (where the vast majority of marketing spend takes place).

I am not sure that I understand what you are saying here. Are you saying that if one wanted to investigate the paths by which people seek out the Xerox website, that one would look up searches for "Xerox.com" on the overture suggestions tool, but ignore searches for the term "Xerox" by itself? Please clarify.

 

The purpose of this thread was to show leakage from .info to .com in heavily marketed sites - not to show how people find .info sites. This leakage is an indication of recall and awareness after exposure to marketing efforts.

In traditional marketing, companies print the url for people to type to view their product as part of that promotion - recall and memorability are important factors for this which explains why companies want their root domains.

When you consider that this offline marketing is the area where the vast bulk of spend is directed this lack of recall is a significant barrier to corporate adoption.

 

Originally posted by safesys
Its catch 22, and theres no commercial reason why this cycle would change as far as I can see.

Let's face it, the only people really pushing for new extensions are the registrars, who understandably see it as a cash cow. They can count on specultors and defensively-registering major TM holders to buy this very low-cost (to "produce") commodity.

As for the usefulness of a "special-purpose" gtld like ".info" filling some kind of need, that can easily be met through the original extensions, and moreover, would require a level of content-enforcement that would be impossibly expensive.

Also, as for ".com" being somehow associated with failure, that's like saying the entire internet is associate with the failure of the so-called "new economy," so we need to build another network and call it something else.

I think even the newbiest of newbies can understand ".com" is just an address in cyberspace, not a business model.

And as for running out of names, that argument also doesn't ring true. The .com namespace still has a substantial number of good business naming choices available, and other than the top-tier domains, the others regged by speculators can usually be purchased for a reasonable price.

One other thing...the .info namespace seems tremendously limited because of it's supposed function. The only things that really apply to the .info namespace is generic topics (health.info, investments.info, france.info, etc). No one would use this extension for corporate naming.

Miles

P.S. Those like myself who feel .com will continue to hold its value as the internet's primary extension (outside of country codes within their associated countries) do so not out of sentimentality, but out of a sober consideration of the internet's entire namespace. No one, of course, has a crystal ball, but nevertheless, the commercial side of the internet, at least in North America, seems permanently attached to the .com extension.

 

[mole]

Originally posted by Namethink


One other thing...the .info namespace seems tremendously limited because of it's supposed function. The only things that really apply to the .info namespace is generic topics (health.info, investments.info, france.info, etc). No one would use this extension for corporate naming.

I agree. For corporate naming, .biz is the preferred extension for the new gTLDs. There is a lot more latitude to play with.

.info is great for portal models.

Best thing, which I try to do, is to get both extensions on the name.

Nonetheless, dotcom will remain the defacto extension for most purposes, followed by the major ccTLDs like .co.uk, .ca, ne.jp, .com.au ...

From a developer's perspective, its really how you want to carve out your addressing strategy the best possible, given that many top-tier .coms are either developed busineses that won't sell in a million years.

What some people continue to lapse in memory is that the tlds were introduced to inject more meaningfullness and supply to the existing pool of available gtlds. People deserve better names for a reasonable price, not holymolybreadbiz.com leftovers.