Can a New gTLD Registration Identify a .Com Buyer?

I was chatting with a colleague last week, and he mentioned that some of his keywordGTLD.com domain names have been receiving more offers now that the matching new gTLDs have become available to purchase. The new gTLDs will likely lead to people and companies trying to buy the matching .com domain name to prevent confusion and leakage. This will likely mean that it should be easier to determine who is inquiring about the domain name.

If the owner of a  keywordGTLD.com receives an inquiry on his domain name, the first thing he or she should do is perform a Whois search for the keyword.GTLD. Most Whois providers (maybe all) can check the Whois data for the new gTLDs. Instead of having to spend a lot of time trying to investigate who wants to acquire a particular domain name, that information can be found simply by looking at who owns the keyword.GTLD domain name.

For at least the near term, owners of gTLD domain names who build websites and businesses on them would be well served to own the exact match .com domain name. There is most likely going to be confusion, and visitors who don’t go through Google will likely end up on the .com.

If a gTLD owner is confident in the new TLDs, perhaps they should consider a long term lease to own type of deal for the matching .com domain name until they can be sure their customers and website visitors know where to find them. This could allow them to spend less, although if their customers are trained to go to the .com, it might not be a good long term solution.

I don’t know how long it will take for consumers to begin recognizing and realizing there are new domain name extensions, but I predict we will see some keywordgTLD.com sales as a result of companies realizing they need to protect their new websites from consumer confusion.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

11 COMMENTS

  1. When I was blindly following the anti New G crowd I would have thought it was necessary to own the .com…..I have been contacted by domain sellers trying to sell me the matching dotcoms for my New G’s. I am not interested in the matching .coms…The New G’s are cool and innovative because it does not have a .com in it. They look good on business cards and browser bars without the .com. A branding and marketing dream!!.. As far as leakage, there is the possibility that there will be more leakage to the New G’s..FlooringShop.com will be losing some traffic to Flooring.Shop in the near future. The future is about “losing” the tail like .com……

    • “New G’s..FlooringShop.com will be losing some traffic to Flooring.Shop in the near future.”

      I guess you have to be somewhat delusional to be a buyer of new gtlds.

    • The way I see it Aaron, FlooringShop.com can only lose traffic if internet users adopt the .shop TLD, which I believe they wont do, This is where the debate really lies, Will they use it? Will they trust it?, Will they know that it even exists? History has shown time and time again, more than likely NOT.

    • Johnnie – Here is a life lesson for you, much more important than all this domain stuff. What I will tell you will help your business and your life experiences from this moment forward….”NEVER resort to personally criticizing those who you disagree with”….By personally criticizing you show your ignorance and will remain unsuccessful in life whether you are rich or poor…….Good luck to you, it is a long road from where you are standing, but I wish you the best…

    • Raider – I agree to disagree. I feel the new extensions will become somewhat known, sooner then even some experts are saying. I base this on some market research I have done on my own. In coming to my conclusion, I remembered how far computing has come since I was programming the language BASIC on a Tandy TRS-80 and saving it on cassette..lol..Best to you Raider…

    • Aaron, here’s a life lesson for you, don’t be so gullible. The only ignorance being shown is in your comments. Whenever you attempt to compare new gtlds to .com, you’re venturing off into Crazy Land and not helping yourself out any. It’s silly and what I said, delusional.

      “I base this on some market research I have done on my own.”

      Please share with everybody some of your great market research, I would love to see it. I can point to you the low reg numbers of most of these new extensions. Almost half of them aren’t even breaking 100 new regs a day and they haven’t even been out 2 weeks yet.

  2. Don’t forget that partial matching of a gTLD can still be a valid reason to register the keyword, for example: CorporateTech.com now owns Corporate.Technology. How cool is that?

    • Don’t forget that partial matching of a gTLD can still be a valid reason to register the keyword, for example: CorporateTech.com now owns Corporate.Technology. How cool is that?

      Excellent cybersquatting advice, Thank you for sharing.

  3. Don’t forget email confusion angle. Prob half of customer emails meant for new TLDs will go to .com. The likes of Law.com and Lawyer.com are going to make a killing forwarding emails meant for .law and .lawyer. They may end up making a lot more from email forwarding than registrars will make from corresponding new TLDs.

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