Thoughts on CDN GEO's

[rmacdon]

Hi Folks,

I recently bought torontostorage.ca and wondering about your thoughts on Canadian Geos? Most of storage, flowers, hotels etc. are gone.

Thanks,
Rob

[Maxwell]

Great name.

In Canada, .ca geo's have an equal (or possibly better) value than their .com counterparts. But just because the other names are gone, doesn't mean they're any good.

Storage is a commodity service (little will differ from one provider to another), so this is where capturing the lead as soon as interest is shown is most important.

Things like flowers and hotels on the other hand, have very qualitative details to them which is where a brand comes in. Of course, with travel affiliate programs paying very well, a hotels related domain name is not a bad investment by any stretch, it won't do you any good in .ca for the simple reason that you exclude everybody outside of Canada, who are the exact people that are looking for hotels.

I've tried to delude myself into thinking that people outside Canada are comfortable with .ca. They aren't. Relatives of mine in the US had little awareness of the existence of .ca, and believe it or not, didn't even know that there was such a thing as .us.

[rmacdon]

Makes sense - sounds like the best approach would be products or services that Canadians would be looking for. Top 3 cities in Canada: Toronto / Montreal / Vancouver would probably be the best start point then work down the list - flowers / restaurants / apartments / jobs / etc. I think we are already into the secondary market for good ones, no free regs happening anymore. With all of the strong generics gone, might be a good avenue at this point.

Thanks for your response.
Rob

[6sons]

I think that anything that has a half decent search score on google is fair game. However the locals dont get seo yet so you may have to nurse them along for awhile. In real estate for example they can buy their own name for $10 and they even seem to prefer promoting their own personal brand. Marketing to locals can be costly for the relative return also. So at worst they can be used as a local search directory as it is easier to sell a link or an ad. Once again, in this case though the domains need to b reasonable search term.

[Maxwell]

However the locals dont get seo yet so you may have to nurse them along for awhile. In real estate for example they can buy their own name for $10 and they even seem to prefer promoting their own personal brand.

By "the locals don't get SEO yet" are you saying that (city)(keyword).ca names don't rank on google at all?

[6sons]

By "the locals don't get SEO yet" are you saying that (city)(keyword).ca names don't rank on google at all?

By locals I meant potential local users/businesses. They seem to prefer to promote their own brand ie joesrestaurant.ca instead of capitalizing on the value of the search term/domain name i.e "Niagararestaurant.ca". Realtors are a good example of this. They make good money with little expense since they dont have to pay for an inventory of their wares yet you have to drag them to buy a keyword domain v ilovemyownname.ca

Not saying they dont rank, I am saying they do indeed. Of course the search term needs to be popular or it wont mean anything. ie. smalltownIneverheardofrestaurant.ca You will be number 1 in google but no one searches for it.

[Adam Dicker]

Canadian Geo .ca's have a better shot at succeeding than that their .com counterparts because the government reserved all the cities names in .ca and that makes people in canada more aware of them.

example, richmondhill.ca and toronto.ca are the governemnt sites.

This helps get the word out to canadians that the government are behind .ca and will give credibility to geo .ca's eventually.

-=DCG=-

[DropWizard.com]

In real estate for example they can buy their own name for $10 and they even seem to prefer promoting their own personal brand.

When it comes to the internet I put realtors at the top of the "stupid don't get it" list with lawyers a close second behind....