Are .Com domain names truly better than the new gTLDs? Well, I have had my suspicions, but there was no way I was going to base my opinions. I decided to put some newly acquired domain names to the test, and use Google AdWords to reveal the results. While there’s no really easy way to test the organic search results, using Google AdWords to drive traffic and test conversions was much faster and more reliable.
I set up two tests. One test used a .Com and a .Diamonds domain name. The other used a .Com and a .Menu domain name. In the first test, I was able to secure two keyword rich domain names: one with the keyword in the domain name, and the other with the keyword in the domain name and in the new gTLD.
I chose these domain names for the primary test:
www.3CaratDiamonds.com
www.3Carat.Diamonds
and I chose brand-related keywords for the second test. I chose these domain names for the second test:
www.MattitosMenu.com
www.Mattitos.menu
I set up two separate landing pages. One landing page for the “diamonds” test and another landing page for the “menu” test. In this case, it was important to make sure that everything was the same for each test. So, everything was exactly the same, including the ad copy used, the landing page, and even the conversions. The only change between each test was the domain name being used.
For each Google AdWords campaign, it was important to us to not only use the same ad copy in the ads, but also to make sure that we used the same keywords in each of the campaigns. We did some preliminary keyword research, and decided on a list of keywords that had enough searches per month to give us enough data to work with.
For the diamonds Google AdWords campaigns, we used 50 keywords total, all priced at $1.00 per click (that is what we bid, but not what we ended up paying for each click). We also bid $1.00 a click on the .Com versus .Menu domain name test.
The Results
