byronbay.me

Anyone have any ideas on value - I am prepared for some very mixed opinions here.

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Hi Robyn,
Great domain, but will need a lot of work to get it ranking. Problem with the unusual extentions is how Google ranks them, the only one I find that ranks ok is .tv domains after all the top extentions.
Will be interesting to see how they go as I noticed they are selling for good money now.
I sold byronbay.com.au and .net.au couple of months back, won't say what they sold for, but it was substantial.
Had a look at your site and see you are a Brisbane local, so am I, I like your about me page with all the goofy looks Lol

Cheers
Don

.me is going to grow i am hoping !!! good onya robyn

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Man o man I would love to own byronbay.com.au

Hi Paz,
I am sure a lot of domainers would have loved it, but I have plenty of other domains to develop and it will be a tough area to get a foothold into. A Byron Bay tourist website at the moment for the area is very intrenched and I think the new owner will have to do a lot of work to get advertisers.

Don

Actually I don't think that's entirely true. Google have said that they don't penalise sites for extension... the only time they consider extension is when returning results for a specific country as they use that to help them ascertain where the website is based (along with hosting). Eg a search in google.com.au will usually result in the top places being dominated by .au domains.

I have noticed though the extension can actually be picked up & reciognised if it actually matches part of the search term itself. So, arguably, a .me domain may rank better for a search like "me go Byron bay". I don't think this is the official line but I've definitely seen it happen.

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Hi David,
I can see your point of view, but I have proven it with my backpocket as I registered .ws and .cc domains and had very little ranking on Google with these extentions. I am dumping them all, as I have mainly .com.au and .net.au domains now.
I believe Google does give better ranking to com.au over .net.au from my own experience, but they won't tell you that. When I say that, it is not by much. For instance I had cooktown.cc which was not ranking well and replaced it with cooktown.net.au with same content and bingo it was on page 2 of Google .au in no time. I did this with 1/2 dozen domains and it was the same result. I have some .tv and actually sold 5 to a guy up the coast as he new they ranked well, I concider .tv's as good as a .net.au for ranking. So time will tell if .me will rank well, I might be proven wrong. Good to have a discussion on the merits though.

Don

Yeah Don, of course you bring up a good point. Google will never tell you all their ranking secrets so much of what we know about SEO is conjecture.

I think in your example it was the .au of the net.au that gave the domain a push onto page number 2. However this would only have been ranked this way for Australian users. I would wager that 2 identical sites, one with a .cc extension and one with a .net.au extansion would rank precisely the same for users outside of Australia (or the Cocos (Keeling) Islands for that matter!).

Google uses 200+ factors to determine ranking but by far the biggest two are content and incoming links. Relevant to people on this forum, I think the domain name would be perhaps the next most important factor (certainly within the top 5).

If extension were a factor, you have to question why? Why would Google want to make a distinction (apart from cc-TLDs as discussed above)? It wouldn't improve user experience as far as I can see?

Actually as I've been typing I've just had a thought, maybe this is worth considering:

1) CTR (click through rate) is definitely a factor in ranking. Sites that turn up in the top 3 for a certain period of time but don't achive any clicks will soon be relegated & vice-versa

2) Users might be more likely to click on a domain depending on its extension. Eg if they see mywebsite.com.au and mywebsite.net.au, they may be slightly more likely to click on the former resulting in a higher CTR which could then result in the com.au ranking higher!

So maybe after all, extension does matter for ranking but indirectly.... better go and edit my previous post now

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Google definately dont seem to like the chinese extension and .info because they are so popular with spammers (cheap).

I agree entirely with your thoughts above and on CTR as a smaller factor...but I have seen .info sites with great content in the top organic spot.

So how long do you think it will take me to get it to the first page? Anyone care to bet? LOL.

Bear in mind I can not start working on it until December.

Robyn

PS - Thanks Don - had a few comments on the About Us page lately

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