cctld .ca future challenges

[trlg]

You're right, nothing contentious in the quote, the quote is only from the email pointing to the survey not the survey itself (which is what I took issue with). To me, the survey seemed designed with leading questions to produce the outcome they were looking for (note: only my opinion, but I worked for over a year doing survey design at one time and this one seemed to have too many leading questions). I tried the survey link in that email to see if I could get you actual quotes/questions from the survey, but unfortunately the link was dead and survey inactive. So unfortunately I can only go by my memory of it. At the end of the day my impression was that they were making too much cash and were testing the idea of putting them into a for-profit entity. Maybe I'm wrong, I'm all ears if others have other knowledge on this issue. Wish I had a copy of that survey.

hm. I guess u could be right about the survey. I wish i could take a look at it as well.

 

[NostraDomainus]

Future of .ca - Me running for Board. [Vote Quimby!! (hehe)]

I think it would be interesting to run in the next CIRA Elections (Imma watch this election and learn about it more.) and then see what can be done to evolve the .ca ext. Greater integrity to enforcing the rules behind .ca to allow for greater parity in the .ca drop market would be something I would look into (some drop catchers are manipulating the market to articifically inflate .ca prices imo).

It would be interesting to see CIRA go for-profit and bring value-added stimulation the .ca market - encouraging development. Maybe offers tools and networking services whereby .ca holders have a focal point to harnessing the collective power of Canadian Web Savviness (something similar to the .TV re-launch by Demand Media maybe).

So as a complementary question to the start of this thread (Where do you see .ca going for the future?), I would also ask:

Where do you Want to see .ca go for the future?

In light of your breathe of knowledge and experience with .com and other extensions -=DCG=- What are your thoughts towards where you see .ca going and where would you want to see it go?

[Vote Quimby! ;-)]

 

[DropWizard.com]

hm. I guess u could be right about the survey. I wish i could take a look at it as well.

Ask and thou shalt receive (my sermon for the day:lol: )

June 27, 2006
CIRA announces the results of its online consultation
Members voted on the administration of potential additional revenues

Ottawa July 27, 2006 – During the months of May and June 2006, CIRA consulted with its members to gauge agreement with CIRA Board Committee suggested recommendations regarding the administration of potential additional revenues.

The online consultation was held following CIRA’s Special Members’ Meeting in February 2006 and the work of CIRA’s Board of Directors, which has long considered how it might deal with the issue of potential excess revenues.

As a not-for-profit corporation incorporated in Canada, CIRA must not generate a profit or excess revenues. Excess revenues beyond what are pre-payments or funds that are considered an acceptable level of reserves, will be taxed. Should this situation occur on a regular basis, CIRA’s status as a not-for-profit corporation could be jeopardized.

More than 10, 200 CIRA members voted by a strong majority in favour of the two recommendations put forth for their feedback, that is:

72 % indicated they were in favour of the Board Committee’s proposed recommendation that CIRA establish an independent body to administer and distribute excess resources within CIRA's mandate; and
73% indicated they were in favour of allocating excess revenues, should they occur, to causes and activities which serve Canada's future social and economic development through the promotion and development of electronic commerce in Canada.
With a margin of error of +/- 1%, 19 times out of 20, the survey results were favourable to the proposed choices. Responses received from across Canada indicated strong support for social causes such as the prevention of spam, phishing, online fraud and child pornography.

CIRA’s Board of Directors will begin to analyse the direction received from its membership after the Board elections, which will be held in September 2006.

 

[liberator]

Thanks Drop Wizard

 

[djallan]

Challenges:
- Large numbers of .ca held by speculators with parked pages that don't offer anything uniquely canadian (and diminish the utility of typing in any .ca at random). At the moment I'm about 98% guilty of this too, but am working on something better.

I don't see this as much of a challenge because of the relatively small number of .ca speculators. Could become more of a problem in the next few years though. While Canadian content development is always best I actually prefer to see a parked .ca domain than a "server not found"

- Usability. One of the biggest problems with .ca is ease of use. Way back when .com was a complex system, and registrars themselves managed to figure out ways to make transfers etc much easier. With .ca, CIRA holds all the cards making it difficult to make the .ca processes any easier. Now while there are a few small advantages to the ways that CIRA does it, it also makes .ca difficult to own for the average non-techie canadian. This does more damage to .ca overall than almost any other factor combined. Hard to imagine that only very recently did cira actually put on a login/password box that could be easily found and used on their own site for example. For the average user .ca registrations and transfers are way too difficult.

Agree completely with this point, especially in regards to transfers.

I think Quebecs demand for IDN .ca domains and their (inevitable?) implementation will present a challenge in the next few months.

 

[whitebark]

I actually prefer that many of the best .ca's remain parked. it makes it far easier to get my .ca websites ranked on the first page of the search engines.

By September I should have another 50-60 .ca websites up and running so keep 'em parked - I don't mind.

And I agree - for the non-domain investor or non-.ca developer the whole process of registration, transfer, registrant etc etc can be a tad overwhelming. But, it does offer good safeguards for our domains, but they really should allow .ca domains to be pushed like .com, .net etc without incuring the associated costs as they are now. That might add many more low level sales. A $20 .ca domain purchase is always $45 or more.

 

[hugegrowth]

By September I should have another 50-60 .ca websites up and running

What kind of sites if you don't mind me asking. One page information sites with adsense or affiliate programs, or multiple page sites?

 

[whitebark]

What kind of sites if you don't mind me asking. One page information sites with adsense or affiliate programs, or multiple page sites?

From www.antivirusprotection.ca to www.fyo.ca Always multi-page and always original content. Search engines love on topic original content.

Those who already own the best .ca's can keep em parked. I'll trade their type-ins for search engine traffic any day. :smilewinkgrin:

 

[hugegrowth]

how do you get so much original content, and how many pages can you do per site in general?

 

[whitebark]

how do you get so much original content, and how many pages can you do per site in general?

That's a trade secret! LOL

Here's a challenge domain from the drop this week - kidsexchange.ca

Did they not notice?

 

[Jacksplat]

Answer to impactadmin:

The single most problem we face are the quantity of parked domains going up over the last 3 years with our ccTLD. It'll turn around and bite us in the butts.

what the ??? u mean to say that if i were to register, say xxxx.qc.ca, that xxxx.ca would be reserved for me too?

If you have any .ca with or without the provincial extension you will hold rights to all of them.

There is an attitude of "do gooders" that has been present in Cira and it's board/employees that has bothered me. There seems to be a real lack of understanding of the idea of commercialism (making $$$$)

Thier mission isnt domainers commercialism.

.ca has a pretty good rep. opening it up to a domainers market wont be the best for popularity.

I see restrictions on .ca ownership as a big plus. As an owner of quite a few domains, I can see how opening .ca to the world at large would be a nice way to earn a quick buck. But on the other hand, I think that'd compromise the long term health and differentiation of .ca. Right now .ca is attractive to canadians cause it does indicate a business that's more likely to be canadian. The reason we see it on billboards and business cards in Canada is because it communicates something about the company that uses it - namely that they've made some effort to at least appear local.

Challenges:
- Large numbers of .ca held by speculators with parked pages that don't offer anything uniquely canadian (and diminish the utility of typing in any .ca at random). At the moment I'm about 98% guilty of this too, but am working on something better.
- CIRA itself. All the moves I've seen made by CIRA continue to diminish my confidence in them and their ability to look out for the interest of .ca. Example, after years of mentioning support for IDN, still have none. Another example, not long ago they surveyed asking about a switch to becoming a for-profit entity. i.e. Right now they've got a problem making too much money as a non-profit, so rather than market .ca better or decrease pricing they're testing the waters with this silly strategy.
- Usability. One of the biggest problems with .ca is ease of use. Way back when .com was a complex system, and registrars themselves managed to figure out ways to make transfers etc much easier. With .ca, CIRA holds all the cards making it difficult to make the .ca processes any easier. Now while there are a few small advantages to the ways that CIRA does it, it also makes .ca difficult to own for the average non-techie canadian. This does more damage to .ca overall than almost any other factor combined. Hard to imagine that only very recently did cira actually put on a login/password box that could be easily found and used on their own site for example. For the average user .ca registrations and transfers are way too difficult.

Couldn't have said it better myself. I've been saying some of this for a couple of years now but not so well worded.

how do you get so much original content, and how many pages can you do per site in general?

I know you werent asking me but I'll answer anyhow with what I do with hope that it helps out fellow canuckdians with their developement and presence.

I simply have an article writer on hire. One in particular is a retired teacher, i pay her 800$ p/month to keep a steady flow coming in. I have so many sites of which alot are based on information. I give her the topics i need filled and she does her research (very well i might add) and sends me the articles. I then submit them in the appropriate pages.

There is no way I can spend time writing the amount of articles i need to keep up with things. I'd post some examples but I already spend alot of time crawling the net for copies of my original content.

 

[hugegrowth]

What do you do if you find copies of your original content? Seems like it would be hard to police anyone snatching your stuff.

 

[Jacksplat]

Thus far I've been lucky. If I ever find something it will be heard here at dnf along with whatever comes of it.

 

[whitebark]

What do you do if you find copies of your original content? Seems like it would be hard to police anyone snatching your stuff.

Usually the search engines know whose came first and sink the other into the supplemental results rarely to be seen. But, should they copy your content before the search engines get to it and index it, then you could have a problem. google for example has avenues to contact them regarding a website scrapping your content without permission.

In the end though, copying content really doesn't get you very far these days. The search engines place much more emphasis on original content vs anything duplicate. If your entire website is a duplicate it could also be dropped from the search index all together.

Since Jacksplat gave away his method of content (I do something similiar but different), I'll give a hint as well. This only works for brand new websites that have not been indexed yet and don't appear on the net anywhere. Once you have new website live on the net don't tell anyone about it, don't link to it or otherwise give its location away. Only submit the url to the major search engines and wait for it to be indexed. MSN I have found will usually get to the site within a few days, google and yahoo can be up to two weeks. It's a bit of a waiting game, but you know once they have been there, your content is the original content of record. At that point start your link building and advertising campaign. k:

 

[hugegrowth]

So is it worth using those free article sites to get content for your sites? From the examples above it would be recognized as duplicate content and not get you ranked high, or at all.

 

[Jacksplat]

Using free articles can help getting indexed. But unique content will help indexing and higher placement. You may have noticed if you search in quotes a sentence from one of your "shared" articles that the source is the one who placed first as the search result. After them comes all the copiers. Sometimes you will see hundreds of results and your site might be on the last page. I've had many sites generated from services, and from my own service. I do make revenue pretty quick so long as the domain already receives traffic. If the domain had little traffic indexing helps very little when your copying content.

You'll get much further writing ten articles yourself than scraping 100 articles from free article sites.