Geographic Domain Names

Leave it to the parent company of my hometown newspaper, The Nashua Telegraph, to really get the importance of domain names. I just noticed that they own and operate NH.com, the guide to New Hampshire. Unfortunately, they can’t buy Nashua.com, as it’s owned by publicly traded Nashua Corporation and they won’t sell it (well, I offered 6 figures to their CFO over the phone and he said they wouldn’t sell).
Nevertheless, The Telegraph and its parent company own the premier online portal for New Hampshire. NH.com is easy to remember, easy to navigate to, and it just makes sense for a New Hampshire-based publishing company to own. When publishing companies like The Tribune Company are filing for bankruptcy and other newspaper publishers are distressed, The Telegraph and its parent company will be rewarded for thinking ahead.
I bought Lowell.com and Burbank.com not only because they will become the leading guides to these cities, but I can also expand to providing news. They might not consider these sites competition now, but in a few years, who knows..   Some newspaper companies thought ahead, and others didn’t (ironically, the Burbank newspaper is owned by The Tribune Company).

Skip Hoagland and his team have announced the launch of Portland.com, a geowebste geared toward resident and visitors of Portland, Oregon. Portland.com is a part of GeoDomains New Media family of Companies, which includes other great geowebsites such as Atlanta.com, BuenosAires.com, HiltonHead.com, and MyrtleBeach.com.
Press Release:
Nov 17, 2008 – Portland.com today announced the launch of their newly redesigned website that provides information to visitors and residents of Portland, Oregon.  After one month of development and content building, new site offers thousands of additional pages and features.
For visitors to Portland, the new site offers information about attractions, lodging and things to do along with reviews and ratings.   “We want to provide as much information as possible to the tourist to Portland, whether they are traveling for leisure,  visiting family and friends, or for those seeking information for business travel,” said Jeremia Froyland, the Operations and Marketing Director for Portland.com.
“We believe that we owe it to the community and visitor’s to be the one-stop site for any and all information on Portland, Oregon,” Froyland noted. “With the re-launch of Portland.com, we have integrated a myriad of features that make finding information about Portland as easy as possible.  From events to business listings to community interaction, we believe we have put a world of knowledge at a visitor’s fingertips.”
In addition to providing information for tourists and visitors, the new site offers many local and community features that provide information to residents of the “City of Roses.”  Technical & Operations Director Josh Stauffer noted “We have filled the site with useful information about real estate, neighborhoods, community events and you can now find thousands of business that are located in Portland.  With many of the business listings we have not only built in features that allow ratings and reviews, but we also have uploaded descriptions, maps, hours of operation and several other features that provide a great experience for visitors to Portland.com.”
As part of the site’s effort to build and enhance the community, they are also offering free event listings, free business listings, free classified ads and the ability to post and submit your press releases for free.  Stauffer continued “We want to build and support this great city as much as we possibly can.”
Froyland added “Additionally we are very big on supporting the GeoDomain (domains that are geo-specific in nature) industry through our continued support and promotion of Associated Geos, which is a network of city, state and country sites.  By providing visitors to all of our sites with useful, helpful information, each member of Associated Geos is helping build the new frontier for local and visitor information online.
About Portland.com
http://www.Portland.com offers information for residents and visitors of Portland, Oregon on their website.  With information about hotels, real estate, news, attractions and businesses, they cater to online users who seek any information about Portland, Oregon.

As reported on DNN.com late last week, Richmond.com has been purchased by Media General, parent company of Richmond Times-Dispatch and other newspapers in different medium to large markets. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Richmond.com receives 2.7 million monthly page views, 120,000 monthly unique visitors and an 8.8% share of the Richmond online viewing market.
Richmond.com has been one of the best examples of a non-newspaper-owned geodomain that saw huge traffic (and presumably revenue) figures because of the great content they produced. They had no newspapers to print and could focus all of their efforts into producing great, relevant articles that were important to viewers in the Richmond area. The 2.7 million page views to 120,000 unique visitors shows that people return to the site frequently, proving how important good content is.
I don’t know any details about the deal aside from what I read, but I presume the Richmond Times-Dispatch online newspaper will eventually be integrated with the domain name Richmond.com, which is certainly better than the current domain name they use, InRich.com. Media General will receive the best domain name for the Richmond area as well as a devoted audience.
I won’t preach, but this deal is exciting for someone like myself. My plan continues to revolve around making Burbank.com and Lowell.com websites that are useful and important to people who want to learn more about these cities. As revenue increases, I intend to hire reporters to expand the news offering on the sites, which will increase traffic and revenues.   I hope 2009 will be a year of great growth for Burbank.com and Lowell.com, and if the last two weeks of search engine traffic for Burbank.com is indicative, it’s going to be a very good year.