Poll: .Net vs. New gTLD

Yesterday, I read Kevin Murphy’s article, “Is the free ride over for Verisign’s .net?” In the article, cited comments from Verisign CEO Jim Bidzos and Verisign CFO George Kilguss regarding the current state of .net domain names and their future.

After sharing public comments made by Bidzos and Kilguss, Murphy wrote, “As .com buyers start to see more and more options for duplicative or defensive registrations in their shopping carts, they’re going to be less likely to grab the .net to match their .com, in my opinion.” I tend to agree with Murphy on this, although I’ve never really bought the .net (or .org), especially if it involved paying a premium.

With the new gTLD options available, I am curious about whether you would choose a .net domain name or a new gTLD domain name, assuming a comparable price. I say “comparable price” because most keywords of value in .net would need to be purchased on the secondary market, and most keywords of value in new gTLD would likely need to be purchased from the registry or from a domain investor that already bought it.

Please vote in the poll below and share your comments about your preference.


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

28 COMMENTS

  1. I personally would chose the new gTLD over .net. Aslong as it was strictly ‘keyword.extension’ for example, I own betting.exchange and I would personally value that more than bettingexchange.net. I believe the keyword.extension may have some future, more future than a .net anyway.

  2. I am a little confused as to what to answer. It depends.

    If the domains were domain.investing vs domaininvesting.net I would choose domain.investing. But I never liked .net.

    If it the domains were domains.guru vs domains.net I would choose domains.net as .net is better as a generic extension than .guru.

    And comparable prices are very difficult to get. .Net is much more expensive at the moment as a one off purchase.

    Is the .com not available? Then maybe you need “both” as an option.

  3. It looks like the argument is whether to register the .net while owning/getting the .com. The truth is that .net is a standalone entity, preferred by tech sector professionals, general users and the occasional German company as a companion to their .de. I don’t see .net losing in the long run.

  4. We consider investing in .net almost exclusively for generic terms and in this case we definitely prefer .net over any new gTLDs.

    And often new gTLDs don’t make sense on their own, sometimes because the term is on the wrong side of the dot.

  5. The new GTLDs only work when both the left and the right side of the dot make sense together unless it’s a GEO GTLD.

    womens.clothing, landscape.photography, party.rentals etc…..

    So the answer is I would choose a one word .net over a one word .GTLD but if the two words in a new GTLD make sense together then I would choose the new GTLD.

    It’s funny when you really think about it because one word domains have always been the most sought after but with these new extensions the ones that will be worth more are two word domains where the left and right side of the dot work together.

    • with the new gtlds there are basically no one word domains. unless you count a hack of a word, one word.

      many times people would have no choice other than the .net as there is only a limited number of new gtlds out there, the chances of one of them being the keyword the person needs might not be very high. for example say a businesses name is “Front Street”…what new gtld would they go with? There is no .street and who knows when if ever there will be, so while the can go with the .net or choose a gtld to go with that might suit their field, its not something that is going to work well for a number of people/businesses.

  6. I think the category killer and one word brands in the dot nets are actually at a value right now, but are the only names in dot net worth having. If your portfolio is full of dot nets you are in big trouble. The are leaking value every day and in my opinion, may never recover.

  7. In my opinion the .net brand is tarnished by the fact it was the red headed step child to .com and because of the low quality of sites that populate it’s namespace. The new gtlds seem innovative while .net feels boring, cheap and old.

    There is no such thing as a single word domain name. A true single word domain name would look like this: http://domain. The closest you can get is a hack.

    Further weighing down the future of .net is that it is not that relevant to stuff on the left of the dot. Boats.net(work) is probably less of a thing than Boats.club or Boats.deals.

    • I’ve never been big on dot net’s, I may have a few in my portfolio, that’s not to say the extension doesn’t hold value, it most certainly does, If your lucky enough to grab a strong keyword domain that relates to Internet technology, you can net a 6 figure sale, we’ve already seen it happen and more than once.

      Now try landing a six figure sale with any of these crappy gTLD’s, chances of that happening are about as good as winning the powerball.

    • Teen.xxx sold for $400,0000.

      Saying that no gtld is worth 6 figures is silly. The value of a domain name is in it’s prestige, keyword desirability, memorability, and marketing potential. There are some outstanding options in the new gtlds that were worth 6 figures the day they were born.

    • If it sold for $400,000 then why is it reserved by the ICM Registry?

      My point is that no end users are going to pay 6 figures for gTLD, the ones that would are domainers with a hard-on for gTlD’s.

  8. Okay, people, I am not sure whether it’s even the best idea to tell you and reveal this truth, but here’s the real deal from someone who has many domains, probably still a lot more than even
    Elliot now, but is *not* primarily a “domainer,” but is rather primarily by a big margin a publisher:

    >For sites that you actually publish, you ignore the .net at your peril – BIG TIME.

    >If the .net holder is also publishing and has done a better job than you on their site, Google will totally blast you out of water while not putting the .net holder on the first page, but often in or near the #1 unpaid spot.

    >Trust me – I know, and have most definitely learned this the hard way.

    >Finally, when this happens you will most surely realize your mistake, especially if the .net was available and you ignored it thinking you could.

    >For some reason, Google simply loves .net and will treat it like gold that way

    So, do with this what you will, but there are one or two .nets I sure wish I had not ignored when I could have easily obtained…

    P.S. Recently with that in mind, I did reacquire a certain .net I had let slip some time ago. 🙂

    • Correction: that should be “while not ONLY putting the .net holder on the first page, but often in or near the #1 unpaid spot.”

  9. Besides making money, I always thought that the point of new GTLDs is to provide more keyword options that are no longer available in the more popular GTLDs, but I see a lot of people who believe that new GTLDs aren’t valuable if the keyword and extension combined don’t form a domain hack. I think that the determining factor for quality should be the value of the keyword and whether or not the keyword has correlates with the industry that the extension represents.

    For example Foreclosures.House isn’t meant to be the equivalent of “Foreclosures House”, because that wouldn’t make sense as a sentence, but it does make sense in the same way Foreclosures.net makes sense. Foreclosed.Houses is essentially a domain hack.

    I haven’t seen one company or individual make a domain hack out of .net, but now with the influx of new GTLDs people are all of a sudden domain hack orientated when assessing the value of a new GTLD domain.

  10. “Besides making money, I always thought that the point of new GTLDs is to provide more keyword options that are no longer available in the more popular GTLDs.”

    Do you really think ICANN is approving these gTLD’s to provide more keyword options to consumers? You don’t need hundreds of new TLD’s to accomplish that, ICANN’s intention is to change the way users browse the internet, plain and simple, they feel that once it takes hold, they can approve thousands more, It’s all about future profits and nothing else.

    • Well, it’s no secret Raider. This is why I said “besides making money”. Their justification is probably a long list of “practical reasons” behind their decision to allow more GTLDs. I only mentioned one…

    • @ Elliot, you didn’t specify whether or not this was a networking name, so I voted for neither. If were talking networking or Internet related, naturally I’d go with the dot net and MAYBE just maybe I’d register a matching gTLD as a defensive registration, But for me to choose the gTLD version alone and ignore the .net, only way that would happen is if I had gun to my head. 🙁

  11. You know, Elliot, I just want to say that no longer having the like/dislike options is still a real loss here, even if you felt the need to rename them now. Some of us felt strongly that you only really did it to protect one particular person, or in my case that may have at least been the main reason by a very big margin, and I’ll just say if that’s so then there’s not way that could have been worth it imo. I think it may have also put a significant damper on overall participation as well. But obviously it’s still you house and you can decorate it any way you want, though it sure did seem that most people favored having them.

    • John, you wouldn’t happen to be referring to the guy who bears a strong resemblance to Grandpa Munster would you?, you know that attending a trade convention and kissing butt has it’s rewards don’t you?

      I think a lot of people here feel the same way you do, bring it back, Best way to find out is to put it up for a vote, If that doesn’t work I suggest you attend the upcoming Namescon convention and buy Elliot a few drinks, that should get you red carpet treatment for at least a year, maybe two.

    • LOL, Raider, I only just got in, ate a late evening supper and logged on to find your post of less than 10 minutes ago.

      I’ve never seen a pic of the guy, but I thought you had been among any of us who had picked out exactly who it would be some months ago, and from what I do know of him from old forum days he would not be near that old and would also probably be in pretty good shape and appearance as well. I could say more, but that would be telling. 😀

      Nice thing, too, even thought I had already thought of the same guy back then as being the protected one, I was never the one here at the blog who actually first made the “charge” or named the guy. You know what they say about some of those coincidences, LOL. 😀

      Raider, we sometimes have some minor but even healthy differences, but you so truly rock, and your husband is such a lucky man… 😀

    • Oh, and P.S. – my concern about these votes and polls is that they can so easily be faked or pumped so that someone could so easily obtain the vote they really want… 😉

    • …And I don’t want to get too carried away and be too generous here, Raider. You only so truly rock *sometimes*. The rest of the time you are either ignoring me or I’m on your crap list. 😉 😀

    • LOL.. I’m sometimes bad with replying, Elliot wrote me months ago and I still haven’t gotten around to writing him back.. Let me put it this way, when I strongly disagree your almost guaranteed a reply.. As for Munster, yes perhaps a younger version. Go to dnjournal, archives, first name, top link. 🙂

      And I do agree with you that votes can be influenced one way or the other, we saw it repeatedly every year when Andrew at DNW ran his annual survey, it was so bad that he removed company names from his last survey, Some people are so insecure they have to cheat the system to prove to themselves their #1, when in reality their NOT.

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