Video 4 – International domain names
Today you will hear my opinion on International domain names(IDNs). More appraisal tips are coming later this week I think. Purchased HardDrives.com yesterday. 
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nam.es
Today you will hear my opinion on International domain names(IDNs). More appraisal tips are coming later this week I think. Purchased HardDrives.com yesterday.
Bruce 20:07 on June 10, 2009 Permalink
Algis,
It’s sanbio from Bido.com chat. Want to see a list of my names? email me at domains@dnaffiliates.com
Walt 20:44 on June 10, 2009 Permalink
Good videos and congrats on your purchase of HardDrives.com. Do you share the how much you bought it for?
tee1 23:40 on June 10, 2009 Permalink
Awesome that you recommend buying idn.fr. where I can register hôtel.fr?
nam.es 23:55 on June 10, 2009 Permalink
idn.fr, idn.ru and many others that actually make sense are not available for registration. What I meant when I said about .fr is that they would actually make sense. Local language IDN .cctld of same country.
Phio 00:15 on June 11, 2009 Permalink
Hi,
I’m not going to try to convince you that IDNs are going to be the next great thing to hit the internet. Perhaps Google’s Wave is or some new kind of facebook. I do think that IDNs will be big in the next few years based on my own research. What I am finding now is that End-Users are beginning to be interested in IDNs, not just domainers. I recently completed a sale of a Middle Eastern IDN which I am very happy about. We have seen IDNs move up to another level in the past 2 months. This is evident based on the number of IDNs being registered in their ‘home’ countries. Also, Google, Yandex, Baidu etc statistics are showing that many keyword and GEO searches are doubling within the year, and that people are searching extensively in their native tongues. These are not typos…users generally know what they are searching for.
Also, the number of English speakers using the internet and the number of non-English speakers using the internet is about equal at this time (2009) Within a year or so the non-English speakers will surpass the English speakers by many millions. In fact, Chinese Internet users passed up American usage in 2008.
That being said, IDNs do have a ways to go for many languages. Each language is different as you mentioned, and IDN.de is a great investment. Really it all depends on the language.
Phio
ps. you can click on my name to see an Arabic IDN minisite. =)
nam.es 09:43 on June 11, 2009 Permalink
Hi Phio,
see the main idea is not to tell people that LOCAL searches do not exist. It is to make their heads understand that owning russian IDN .com doesn’t mean ANY significant advantage over any other extension. IDN.ru could be great, IDN.IDN will be good. ruIDN.com – nope. It is just the attitude of Russian people and their habbits. They don’t need it and they don’t use it. Look at wordstat.yandex.ru and find any huge keywords with .com next to them. Now do the same with .ru, and now do the same with .ru in russian language. You can clearly see .com is nowhere near. And the fact that you have IDN .com will not help you to get quick into yandex top1 for your keywords. This is facts.
I have nothing about investing in IDNs, I just want people to actually put some thought in it. It was like 5 years or more since Russian IDN .com’s – so where is it?
Perelman 10:53 on June 11, 2009 Permalink
Could you share how much you paid for harddrives.com?
Phio 11:12 on June 11, 2009 Permalink
Yes I agree IDN.ru would be great, and if it were not for .ru, I wouldn’t be able to reg Russian IDNs with as much certainty. Although I do make mistakes because I wasn’t born in Russia.
There was a guy on another forum about a year ago who was saying the same thing you are saying…at the same time he was regging ruIDN.com ’s like crazy. Luckily I just kept on regging what I could. His being a Russian native definately has it’s advantages when it comes to registering IDNs. And when IDN.IDN does come for Russia, it will be fantastic.
As far as Yandex goes. I submitted an IDN a few months back, and it was indexed in a couple of days, just looked for it but can’t remember, so I just submitted смайлик.com to Yandex, so maybe we can check back in a week. http://Xn–80aqcfdd8a.com
Anyways, luckily we all have our own niche and it keeps the world turning.
Phio
nam.es 11:17 on June 11, 2009 Permalink
Phio,
I did not say they will not be indexed. I said they will not be given any priority. Which renders owning ruIDN.com giving no advantage over owning any other ruIDN.cctld – that is my opinion.
Also please don’t forget this is just my opinion. I don’t want to start a holywar.
What I am saying is:
1) if you go IDN, go local CCTLD or IDN.IDN
2) do not spend much for names like IDN.com
3) be sure to learn market and language difference, since be can be significantly different from what you get used to with other domains and extensions. e.g. the fact that .com rules the world doesn’t mean .com rules ruIDN. and so on.
4) do what you think is right. you could be right after all or not.
Phio 11:51 on June 11, 2009 Permalink
Bill 14:59 on June 13, 2009 Permalink
There are a LOT of Russian speakers, and local Russian addresses showing in the who.is for Russian idn.com and idn.net. It is speculated that there will be much politics and government control in awarding many idn.idn, and most certainly many names (especially City and various geo domains will be blocked for government use like has happened with .cn and .jp) making .com the main choice to build a site on. That is why idn Moscow.com is so valuable.
It is also in the works that .com will become .com (idn) if you are familiar with Verisign proposal for DNAME (or some variant of aliasing). Most people will agree that idn.cctld are good choices, but many (especially Chinese domainers) will tell you very strongly that they believe idn.com will be “king” for idn domains in their language. As big as the internet is in Russia, I think that idn.ком will find a nice niche, especially with browsers that default to .com for type ins. JMO.
nam.es 17:12 on June 14, 2009 Permalink
Bill, I don’t know much about chinaIDN.com – I never said my opinion on it. I just expressed my opinion on ruIDN.com that makes no sense, especially at ridiculously high prices.
hsnv 20:54 on June 18, 2009 Permalink
that’s true