I like to do my own research to find prospective buyers for some of my domain names, and I thought of a way that might be useful to find new leads. Typically, I use Google.com to search for companies that use the keywords of the domain name I am selling. I thought perhaps using a ccTLD where Google operates could bring additional prospective buyer leads.
Google operates many localized search engines using its ccTLD domain names. Google.co.uk, Google.com.do, Google.ca, and Google.ie are all examples of Google’s search engines that  are geared towards local searches in those particular regions.  For instance, if you look up London dog walkers  on Google.co.uk, you are likely to find more local results than if you would do the same search on Google.com.
I’ll give you an example of how this might work using one of my domain names – VisitZimbabwe.com. If I search for Zimbabwe tours or Zimbabwe safari on Google.com, I would probably see results from major tour companies first. Perhaps some of the larger travel websites would also have top rankings as well. If I searched those same keywords on Google.co.zw, the Zimbabwe version of Google, chances are good that there would be more localized results. Being able to find local businesses for a specific domain name like  VisitZimbabwe.com may be beneficial.
Of course there are some caveats to this:
- Local companies may be more inclined to use their own ccTLD domain names rather than .com.
- Leads may be too targeted and  might not want a broad .com domain name.
- Smaller companies may not have the budget to buy an expensive domain name.
- Recipients may not understand English (or your language).
At the end of the day, the objective is to find additional targeted leads, and I think any time you change the start of the search, you’re likely to generate more leads. It can’t hurt to target additional prospective buyers for a broad domain name, and using Google ccTLDs to search for localized prospects could be helpful.
This has worked quite well for me in the past Elliot – it is for me an essential part of determining potential end-users.
When it comes to China, I use Baidu.com instead.
I’ve sold a few ‘yellow page category’ and geo service domains this way. Buyers often used caveat 3 and 1 as a counter argument.
Good strategy, Elliot.
Great post. There are some “secret” commands that you can enter in the Google search form to get specific results. Here are 3 commands that when combined can be used to return very specific results, which may be helpful when searching for potential buyers.
1) Quotation Marks. Some of you may be familiar with the exact phrase (“blue birds”) to get results that only show pages that have an exact phrase.
2) “keyword site:” can be used to search only the pages of a particular site. (“site:bbc.com”), but when you use it like this –> “keyword site:.biz” Google will only return sites with a .biz extension and that particular keyword.
3) “inurl:keyword” will return only pages with the keyword in its URL.
So when you combine them all like the following example:
“blue birds” site:.net inurl:animals
Google will only return pages on .net domains with the exact phrase “blue birds” in it’s content and “animals” in it’s URL.
I’m sure there are many more. If you know of any useful ones, please do share knowledge!
Good info. But still hard for me to find one.
Thanks, useful info, but I still trying. 🙂