what % of traffic lost to .com for other dev'd extensions

[HomerJ]

anyone know of the averge % of type-in traffic a developed .net or .org website will lose to a .com?

I'm looking for a figure from an authoritative source to quote for my sales scripts. thanks

 

[Biggie]

you could reg a com, net and org, develop the org and net, then see how much traffic is lost

i've owned com and net of the same domain, where the net gets the traffic and the com gets nada, nothing, not even a look-see.

i doubt if there is a formula to calculate a percentage, because every domain is different.

you'd have to look at high traffic .org and .net websites, then find traffic values for the .com that's "not" developed to compare.

imo...

 

[draggar]

Type-in traffic will fall 0% when a non-.com is developed. People typing in .com will continue to type in .com unless the non .com gets a lot of publicity and become a well known site (for example, slickdeals.net).

The real effect is with search engines - whoever's SEO is higher will rank higher with search engine results and they'll get more search engine traffic.

 

[HomerJ]

you could reg a com, net and org, develop the org and net, then see how much traffic is lost

haha, that will be a lot more work when hopefully someone here knows the answer

you'd have to look at high traffic .org and .net websites, then find traffic values for the .com that's "not" developed to compare.

yes, this is what i'm looking for. i hoped maybe someone somewhere had done this type of study before. or if there was any way to estimate.

 

[Biggie]

you'd have to look at high traffic .org and .net websites, then find traffic values for the .com that's "not" developed to compare.

yes, this is what i'm looking for. i hoped maybe someone somewhere had done this type of study before. or if there was any way to estimate.

even if you found one or two, you'd still need to have a wide range of samples to compare.

otherwise any results you publish will be flawed.


for instance, a org website that gets 10k visitors a day and a .net that gets 100k visitors per day.
what is the loss factor for each? or if the one .org is non-profit and another is not, is there a difference is the loss factor?

there are too many scenerios

imo...

 

[HomerJ]

even if you found one or two, you'd still need to have a wide range of samples to compare.

otherwise any results you publish will be flawed.


for instance, a org website that gets 10k visitors a day and a .net that gets 100k visitors per day.
what is the loss factor for each? or if the one .org is non-profit and another is not, is there a difference is the loss factor?

there are too many scenerios

imo...

I understand. i'm not looking for the nobel prize in domaining though

just wanted a down and dirty number for overcoming objections. i thought there might be some numbers floating around out there.

 

[David G]

even if you found one or two, you'd still need to have a wide range of samples to compare...

According to statistical and math experts a minimum of 30 samples is needed for the data to have validiity.

p.s. A lot of the traffic bleed depends on the name and extension. For example, a health or disease dot-org site would have very little bleed to the .com because there are so many big medical/health/disease condition sites using .org

A dot-net gambling site would likely not have a lot of bleed since there are well known .net gambling sites.

 

[Gerry]

what % of traffic lost to .com for other dev'd extensions

Interesting question and I look at it from a different perspective.

Lets say, with your assumption and my assumption, the dot com is NOT developed.

You reg another extension and develop that as a web site.

There is no LOST TRAFFIC to the .com because prior to you creating the website, the traffic you are receiving DID NOT EXIST! In other words, all the traffic you get to the dot net (if that is the one you built a site) - all that traffic is a net gain.

In fact, you may be stealing traffic from the dot com if it is a parked paged. That is why I say 100% of your traffic did not exist until you regged the name and built a site. That is also why many times I chuckle when I hear people talk about losing traffic to a dot com.

There is an estimated 45+ million regged domains that are nothing more than parked pages.

To me, any site built and any traffic received is a net gain and potentially taking traffic from a dot com IF that domain is parked.

Now, try to convince the almighty gurus that their .com is losing traffic and see the hissy-fit thrown and the ensuing arguments. They may claim that if it is traffic that did not exist then there is no lose. True, in a sense. But the traffic you receive now had to come from somewhere.

 

[Nomzo]

I have a parked .com which receives 3K type-ins per month thanks to a .co.uk with sub 10,000 Alexa ranking (Alexa is worthless but just to illustrate the .co.uk receives some traffic).

I imagine .net and .org suffer less leakage than other extensions (.com.au etc), due to them being so phonetically different to .com, though I have no stats to back that up.

 

[HomerJ]

what % of traffic lost to .com for other dev'd extensions

Interesting question and I look at it from a different perspective.

Lets say, with your assumption and my assumption, the dot com is NOT developed.

You reg another extension and develop that as a web site.

There is no LOST TRAFFIC to the .com because prior to you creating the website, the traffic you are receiving DID NOT EXIST! In other words, all the traffic you get to the dot net (if that is the one you built a site) - all that traffic is a net gain.

In fact, you may be stealing traffic from the dot com if it is a parked paged. That is why I say 100% of your traffic did not exist until you regged the name and built a site. That is also why many times I chuckle when I hear people talk about losing traffic to a dot com.

There is an estimated 45+ million regged domains that are nothing more than parked pages.

To me, any site built and any traffic received is a net gain and potentially taking traffic from a dot com IF that domain is parked.

Now, try to convince the almighty gurus that their .com is losing traffic and see the hissy-fit thrown and the ensuing arguments. They may claim that if it is traffic that did not exist then there is no lose. True, in a sense. But the traffic you receive now had to come from somewhere.

Doc, I appreciate your perspective. it is quite different than what i had in mind.

so yes, in the scenario i'm considering, i would own a .com, lets say xyzproduct.com. you are in the xyz business, and you go out and buy xyzproduct.net and build it out for your business. you spend a certain budget on marketing your business, maybe you put out ads in the local papers, maybe its just word of mouth, "go to xyzproduct.net for xyzproducts"

people often do make the argument that the average user still has .com ingrained in their head and when they use direct navigation they may be likely to enter .com instead of .net by force of habit. my question is, what is that factor? it would be nice to have it quantified.

another thing you see often is that people appraise a .com higher if there are established sites on other extensions like .net or .org. I just saw it today, someone listed some domains for sale in their blog, and made a point to mention on one of the .com that the .net was a developed site. the perception is that this adds value because... they must lose some traffic to the .com

i dont argue that you could do as well to build traffic to any .net or .org domain that you develop. the argument is mainly, that you do a lot of work to get that traffic, and I, the owner of the .com, do nothing, yet i will still leech off some of your would-be visitors who simply have brainfarts when typing in the extension and default to typing in the .com

if i want to sell my .com to someone and they raise the .net/.org objection, i want to say, look, thats completely fine and okay, so long as you understand you are going to spend $x amount of money building and marketing your website and your business, and x% of that is going to go right to me. you're going to send x% of your potential customers to me.

would anyone not agree with this? if not then why is it a selling point for .coms to say that the .net is developed?

 

[Gerry]

what is that factor? it would be nice to have it quantified.

Tough to do UNLESS, you happen to own both domains and built sites and compare stats OR the .com owners share their stats

OR, you own both and park both with the same company...

OR, perhaps the .com has an affiliate program and you direct your DNS to point to them and you can measure traffic that way...

who know?

if not then why is it a selling point for .coms to say that the .net is developed?

There is the perception that the .com will steal traffic away. That may be true. But, still hard to quantify. If the .net is established and marketed properly then there is this sense that someone else has done your work for you. Still, pretty risky to pump a lot of money into a name with the perceived notion that you are going to steal traffic.

And, again, who's to say that this is not NEW traffic?

Something I love to see is parked domains in all extensions except one - that one being the one I own.

There are an estimated 44 million parked domains in the .com and net (according to DuckDuckGo Toolbar). If this is true, then that is near 1/3 of all sites. When I look up domain extensions to see if this and that extension have a site, and they do not...IF out of the 5 gTLD's - .com, net, org, info, mobi - IF I am holding one of those top 5 and the others are parked pages...that means that 80% of my gTLD counterparts are parked. That, to me, is pretty staggering. Honestly, I have done this examination many times irregardless of the extension I am holding.

If 80% of my gTLD's counterparts (or competition, if you want to call it that) are parked and you decide to take your one gTLD and make a site...and you have traffic...

where is that traffic coming from?

Is it all new traffic? Are you stealing traffic from the other gTLD's being parked? Are you getting traffic because you index better than the others being that you have fresh and current content?

There are too many variables and I am not sure your question can ever be quantified with an accurate formula.

 

[HomerJ]

yea i see your point. i'm mainly concerned with brick and mortar businesses. to play devils advocate here, why should they want the .com at all? .com is king right? well if its not about the traffic then what is it about? besides traffic where else is the value?

 

[draggar]

so yes, in the scenario i'm considering, i would own a .com, lets say xyzproduct.com. you are in the xyz business, and you go out and buy xyzproduct.net and build it out for your business. you spend a certain budget on marketing your business, maybe you put out ads in the local papers, maybe its just word of mouth, "go to xyzproduct.net for xyzproducts"

people often do make the argument that the average user still has .com ingrained in their head and when they use direct navigation they may be likely to enter .com instead of .net by force of habit. my question is, what is that factor? it would be nice to have it quantified.

The .com would benefit from your work - yes, many people will still type in .com when they think of a website and won't necesarily go to the .net.

Sure, many will say "oops" and type in the .net afterwards but not all.

This is a tactic that some online casinos will use. They'll promote their "free" casino with a .net / .org / .info / .us TLD in a magazine (since they can't advertise a paid / real money one) yet will have the .com as a real casino and will benefit from people typing in the .com instead of the other TLD.

yea i see your point. i'm mainly concerned with brick and mortar businesses. to play devils advocate here, why should they want the .com at all? .com is king right? well if its not about the traffic then what is it about? besides traffic where else is the value?

.com is the king but content is the king's ruler. A non .com that is well developed can easily beat out a .com (even if it is developed) when it comes to search engine results.

IMO people are just starting to acknowledge other TLDs now - they tried it with .tv but it didn't take off but now I'm seeing more and more ads (print, radio, TV) that have other TLDs (I saw a couple the other day that were .info!).

 

[HomerJ]

It looks like we have something close to an answer here..

http://www.thedomains.com/2010/03/0...o-site-lose-to-a-com-27000-visitors-in-1-day/