Will .CA ever reach the loyalty of Canadians like the Brits towards .CO.UK ?

[razorblade]

I ask because I keep on coming across some great two word combination keywords, unavailable in both TLDS and .CO.UK or .DE?

Is this extension on the rise? Is it static? Is it on the downward spiral?

[CamMK27]

That is a real good question. Sometimes I wonder and ask myself as well. But I have not seen many big sales in .Ca extention although sad but true.
There are so many .Ca two words domains you can register but if you can't sell or drive traffic to those domains then it is useless. I think a lot of Canadians
still type in .coms in a browser rather than .ca and I am pretty sure the same keyword domains in .com get so much type in traffic and min or probably none in .ca
extention.

There is so much opportunity in .ca to register some great 2 keywords domains and if it ever reached to the level of .co.uk or .de, anyone who registers the domains
can possibly make ton of money in future.

By the way are you a Canadian? It says you are in brooklyn.

[razorblade]

I am from Brooklyn with an insatiable appetite to conquer the cctld planet(:

[hugegrowth]

We have debated this issue a lot on here. You'd be hard pressed to find a Canadian who uses the internet who doesn't know what a .ca domain is. Most major brands operating in Canada use a .ca - Google, Yahoo, MSN, Hersheys, Amazon, iCoke.ca, and on and on. You see them in ads all the time. Germany's .de is the extreme example of country code adoption gone right, with an active market for them. Don't forget UK and Germany have much bigger populations than Canada. We are close to the US and suffer a bit from the '.com was first' scenario, so the .ca market isn't super active right now. The potential is there for the future though, and we do see some big sales, like the recent Slots.ca for 200k.

If you find good two word .ca's right now available to hand reg, chances are if you park them you won't make reg fee back - ofcourse there are exceptions. But if you build a webpage or website for the domain with relevant content, you'll have a good chance to get Canadian search engine traffic and can monetize through ad sense and affiliate programs.

My latest .ca inquiry was from a realtor for a 'cityrealestate' .ca domain. He would only go to $250 for the domain, even though in my opinion one lead that converted to a sale would more than cover the cost, it's easy to remember, looks great in an ad, and would get good search engine ranking. The same name in .com is being used by another realtor in the area. So for now I'll continue to earn from the traffic to the page, and continue to be his competitor, or sell to his competitor.

I will likely drop a few of my .ca this year to pare down my portfolio, ones that don't get traffic, are harder to monetize, or that at the time I thought would be easy to sell, but most I will keep because the internet just keeps getting more popular and all those future websites will need good domains.

[razorblade]

Great feedback. Thanks for your post

[fwdtech]

My latest .ca inquiry was from a realtor for a 'cityrealestate' .ca domain. He would only go to $250 for the domain, even though in my opinion one lead that converted to a sale would more than cover the cost, it's easy to remember, looks great in an ad, and would get good search engine ranking. The same name in .com is being used by another realtor in the area. So for now I'll continue to earn from the traffic to the page, and continue to be his competitor, or sell to his competitor.

What was the ballpark population of the city?

[Adam Dicker]

If you hold product or sevrice domains in the .ca market they will be valuable down the road.

-=DCG=-

[hugegrowth]

Population of the city is between 5,000 and 10,000 - it's in the Okanagan area of BC and house prices are high in the area.

I have many similar domains for homes, realestate and realty and am surprised I don't get more enquiries from realtors. Especially young guys breaking into the realtor business a good domain could give you a quick advantage.

For now I usually just build a one page site for each domain with information on the city and it's real estate, and monetize through ads. I also put an email link on the page to collect home buyer leads.

[Tedgeman]

I wonder if there are stats for companies or registrants that hold .com verses .ca.
I,m certain that .cas are gaining quickly on the com for a number of reasons here in Canada. There are great available names in Ca, and most coms are gone, our cctld is familiar to Canadians, so they are happy to find and register one, and many small business owners prefer to market there business in a "just with in Canada format per .ca"

[RatherGood]

The brits have had a head start with .co.uk from day 1 and immediately used it to distinguish themselves culturally & geographically.


Canada and .ca came to the party late. The initial registration period was also heavily gamed so that didn't exactly help to get the extension out there and in common use and eventually preference.

[razorblade]

One would think that the French speaking population of Canada would be faster adopters of Ca than the English speaking population since the French population would have very little need for the usage of .com websites. That's just a thought. No evidence to back that theory up....

[hugegrowth]

I do well with french sites built on French keyword .ca domains, they get better traffic actually than my english ones.

English Canadians can easily use American websites, so that opens up a whole lot of competition and selection.

French Canadians have way less choice if they want french sites, and really have only those from Canada or France to choose from. About 25-30% of Canadians are french speaking, so it's a significant market for Canada.

You can also get great keywords in french for .ca compared to what's available in english. Less competition from english domainers too. Makes me glad to have french as a second language. There isn't much market for french .ca's and I don't get many enquiries for them, but they get the traffic and earn me the most in ads and affiliate programs than my other domains.

[razorblade]

I take my proverbial hat off to you a second time!! Excellent info. Thank you.