While dot com domains have been the rage since the first domain name was registered, many domainers realize, that yes, we should and do acquire and invest in country code top level domains, ccTLDs.
While Europe is struggling to straightening out its finances, with increased tax burdens for enraged taxpayers, domainers have been quietly moving in, to scoop up what might become tomorrow’s next virtual real estate boom.
Many global domainers/investors have apparently discovered that this could be a very promising market, despite the gloomy outlook of some EU countries. But how high is the interest for country code domains in Europe itself? Judging from stats provided by GOOGLE, it seems there still is plenty of opportunity to acquire quality ccTLDs.
An advance GOOGLE search for the German word ‘Domainnamen’ (Domain names) produced only 733.000 results. Still, the French word ‘nom de domaines' (domain names) came up with 3,000,000 results. (So much higher than Germany, because vineyards in French are also called domaines).
Comparing this with an advanced ‘English language only’ search for domains, which produced a whooping 96,700,000 response, that shows the popularity of top level domains, TLDs. However dot com is now often unaffordable while ccTLDs might still be relatively reasonable priced. It might be one factor fueling the current interest in ccTLDs.
As Europeans are busy getting their financial affairs in order, we might see another domain name boom, this time for ccTLDs, at a time while Germany's interior minister calls for the government takeover of domain name registration, while a few month earlier in January 2010, a French domain, Credit.fr, sold through SEDO fetched €587,500 ($851,875).
Ignorance, complacency and needless over-regulation will have its price in the form of inflated future domain prices, when most premium domain names are acquired by investors, speculators, resellers and cyber squatters. With national interests and protectionism on the rise due to the current crisis in Europe, ‘going local’ with your own ccTLDs might be the right thing to do, right now.
Regardless of where you live - don’t wait until, as has happened with dot com, single word domains (of major European languages) are no longer available for registration. History tends to repeat itself.
Not convinced - than think about this: Having an English language domain name with a country code extension is all the rage right now all over Europe.
