IDN's dropping like flies

[Theo]

As I stated earlier, I acknowledge that the subject it's a matter of choice. However, new personal attacks give me no reason not to retaliate accordingly.

By the way, to the person from Japan that equalized eliticism with racism I say: get a freaking dictionary.

 

[Olney]

Hey Acro
I think at this point many of us are not trying to convince you.
We want to make sure anyone who is interested in the IDN market do their research.
You're not giving anyone facts that are credible.
Even if in some remote chance users worldwide don't use IE7 (& I don't know how this could happen)
All the other browsers are already IDN friendly.
Sedo says buy IDNs, parking companies are trying to be more IDN Friendly.
DCG even grabbed himself like 5,000 of them.

Ask yourself would you want to have a domain keyword in your native language & writing?
I got a feeling you're answer is going to be yes, but "They are" probably used to writing in English.
Realize there is no difference between "you" & "them"
Before IDNs "they" didn't have a choice.

I'm still curious to know how Microsoft's own browser could be a failure?
They just going to pull the free downloads & skip to IE8 without IDN compatibility?

 

[David G]

I just read this entire thread and see quite a spirited debate. It looks like Acro against the world, or at least the IDN world.

Personally, I have no IDN's at all and doubt I would ever get one. 3 main reasons:

1. Have little knowledge if they will succeed or not, but if forced to select one would say no they will likely fail overall or perhaps be less successful than many of you believe, but that view could easily be wrong.

2. Perhaps the main reason is that it's tough enough to make money with ascii names in English so how in the world can we also be a success with foreign language characters, especially for those who only speak English?

3. Another factor is the ppc firms desire North America and mostly English speaking traffic (US CA AU NZ UK IE and some other nations too) so foreign traffic could pay less or not even count in some cases. Look at YPN for example, they do not even want foreign accounts.

Have heard DCG is now one of the largest IDN holders in the world so was wondering how many he now has and also his views on this?

I just installed Explorer-7 (when I went again to try and update my buggy explorer-6 was asked if I wanted to get the free explorer-7) and said OK not neccesarily so much because I really wanted to but more because my Explorer-6 had a bug where the updates always failed. I like explorer7 and especially like the sharper standard font. Only thing so far I do not like is the very small home icon, something I use a lot all day long and is now tough to see due to the small size of the house icon. Yes, IE7 resolves idn charcaters as I just tried an idn url.

 

[Olney]

These questions or concerns can be answered.
Most parking programs like NameDrive are powered by Google (Adsense).
You can use the Adsense to monetize domains
For the market I invest in (Japan) PPC rates & cost have been comparible to the US for several years.
To advertise in the top position in Career, or Loan it's over $5 a click to be on the top 5 of the best terms.
The problem is most people didn't know that there are different OVT bid tool for different countries(to do a general idea check).
Or you can use the adwords bid tool.
A person who feels they don't have confidence in foreign languages in IDNs is a legit reason to not invest.
But truthfully this isn't about revenue.
When the domainers starting buying great domains back before domain forums were established, they bought the best keywords before the market was completely established.

This is not an overnite success story for us. Some markets will take another 2 years to develop & some will take 5 to 10 but we already are fully aware of this.

The main goal is that natives will build & use the domains.

 

[wrdekle]

As I stated earlier, I acknowledge that the subject it's a matter of choice. However, new personal attacks give me no reason not to retaliate accordingly.

By the way, to the person from Japan that equalized eliticism with racism I say: get a freaking dictionary.

"Eliticism"? Perhaps you mean "elitism"? I'll take back my compliment about your spelling.
It's so cute to watch you try to formulate a retort, I'm thinking that this is probably your native language and it's only my second. It seems that bullying tactics and ad hominem attacks are what you dish out in a corner. Since clearly you were too steamed to pay attention, I used both adjectives consciously. If I were truly conflating the words "elitist" and "racist", I would have chosen only one of them to use right? And my attack wasn't personal; I specifically characterized your argument not you personally. If you can't tell the difference, I politely suggest you enroll in a beginner's course in logic.

"elitism" - consciousness of or pride in belonging to a select or favored group.
"racism" - hatred or intolerance of another race or other races.

Truly, I have nothing against you. I'm sure you are a nice enough person in real life. But you started this thread looking for a dialogue. Here it is. You are making blanket statements devoid of facts. On a public forum like this, if you have a point of view, please take the time to back it with something other than this now famous business "gut" of yours.

 

[yanni]

Ωρα γιά καφεδάκι καί τσιγαράκι. Καλύτερο καί από σαπουνόπερες.

Γουστάρω τήν φασαρία πού γίνεται, παρ΄όλο πού καί εγώ εχω χωθεί στά IDN.

Φιλάκια.

 

[bwhhisc]

Personally, I have no IDN's at all and doubt I would ever get one. Perhaps the main reason is that it's tough enough to make money with ascii names in English so how in the world can we also be a success with foreign language characters, especially for those who only speak English?

With the internet and the vast array of measurement tools available it is not only easy...but challenging, sometimes frustrating, and also fun. There are plenty of native speakers that will validate your IDN term on the various forums, and if you don't have it right, use the grace period to "drop" it.

Why not take a small chance, $40 on a half dozen "top" IDNs. Over 500,000 idns have been registered to date...there are forums in foreign langauges dedicated to idns. 80% of the world doesn't speak English, but have been "forced" to use English URLs. If the Russians had invented the internet, would you (a non Russian speaking person) choose to continue to use Russian urls if given the choice to use your own native tongue English?

 

[Explorer]

3. Another factor is the ppc firms desire North America and mostly English speaking traffic (US CA AU NZ UK IE and some other nations too) so foreign traffic not even count in some cases.

So, traffic based on:

People that are searching for mortgages in the UK - valuable.
People that are searching for mortages in France - worthless.

Interesting logic.

 

[David G]

So, traffic based on:
People that are searching for mortgages in the UK - valuable.
People that are searching for mortages in France - worthless.
Interesting logic.

Actually, I only listed English speaking examples but when I said in my post "some other nations too" France was one on that list, plus DE SE NO CH BE NL DNK IT ES SG, even Acro's GK, and others are good.

However, I do believe it is correct there are some ppc firms do not want traffic or do not pay much epc for traffic from a number of other nations, especially some areas of Asia and possibly parts of Eastern Europe too. SG is Singapore and that is I believe good traffic. Hong Kong is ok too, I think, but those nations may pay less epc and/or have fewer advertisers than N America traffic.

From what I recall mortgage is actually derived from or is a French word.

P.S. I believe you can exclude traffic from most any nation you do not want from within Adwords CP and probably others programs too, and many advertisers do that I am sure, especially US based ones who have the largest ad budgets.

 

[Explorer]

However, I do believe it is correct there are some ppc firms do not want traffic or do not pay much epc for traffic from a number of other nations, especially some areas of Asia and possibly parts of Eastern Europe too.

1. So, I guess realestate.com or loans.com in Chinese, Japanese and Russian are all worthless, huh?

2. I am sure that people holding chinese, japanese and russian domains that are making serious google-feed-based PPC income are having a ball and smiling ear-to-ear reading your "ppc firms do not want traffic or do not pay much epc for traffic from a number of other nations, especially some areas of Asia and possibly parts of Eastern Europe too".

 

[Olney]

Hey Trader
I think you are in Finance so I can explain to you the way one of my clients see things.
There are English based services like parking but they have mostly American or English speaking country userbase. If the traffic converts then the advertisers are happy.
Showing English ads for countries like China, Japan, Russia etc do not bring conversions & they know it.
With IDNs my Japanese IDNs should only have Japanese ads on it. NameDrive currently can do this. This is absolutely no need for any English ad on a Japanese IDN domain it won't bring a conversions.

It's a real stereo type about this. If you look at it from my eyes. Traffic from Japan, on a Japanese IDN with Japanese ads bring conversions. Adsense does this. Ovurture Japan does this. Yahoo Publishing is a seperate company.

One of my clients is a high end financial search firm, he'll only advertise in Japan for Japanese finance terms searched. This brings conversions.

& don't worry the SEO firm I work at you'll be surprised on how many international clients fail to just think of things in the same way they would in English initially.

For example in Japanese I have a domain "転職情å*±.jp TenshokuJouho" it means Job/Career Info. When Japanese see the domain, 99% of them can tell what's on it. Plus since the keyword of the domain is in Japanese it has value for search rankings (I've already done research on this).

ASCII domains are not the same keyword that is being search but the IDN is.

 

[domainstosell]

Hi Trader,

I think I understand what you are saying, and it was difficult for me to get a good grasp of it at first, too. But I have added some screenshots to try to help explain.

You are probably correct that, for the most part, American companies using adsense and other online ppc advertising do not value foreign traffic highly, because - depending on the good or service, of course - they may not be able to convert that traffic into customers. However, it is the same way for foreign companies - they do not necessarily want American traffic.

Here is a screen shot of my site, MacauHôtels.com, in English:

Of course you see the English adsense ads.

Now, here is my site after clicking on the Japanese flag under the header to tranlate it to Japanese:

See how the adsense changes to serve Japanese ads?

This is the same thing that parking providers like Namedrive offer: native language ads and templates to maximize your CTR and revenue.

So, with highly-searched-for terms in other languages, paying the same as (or sometimes higher than) top ASCII keywords, and optimized or developed, the potential is there for a lot of money to be made, same as any other top domain.

I hope this helps a bit. I'm not trying to convince you one way or the other about investing in IDNs, just trying to answer your questions and continue the discussion.

 

[Theo]

I am having fun raising a sandstorm in the hornet's nest; because clearly I am not trying to convince you of changing your ways, however I have no qualms about bringing forth my arguments and in the process saving some investors from making the same mistakes you made.

IDN's are being under attack for security & spoofing issues. Read DCG's post of how much of an issue this is: http://www.dnforum.com/showthread.php?t=188702

 

[David G]

....my site, MacauHôtels.com

Bad news for you. I just tried to visit your idn url above from my newly installed explorer-7 browser but my pc makes a beep and then displays a warning message saying "The website contains characters or letters that can not be displayed using my current settings."

There is a zero chance I will decide to change my IE7 settings and also doubt many others will change the settings! Why would I bother to change my settings (and possibly have security risks, maybe invoving phishing) when I am not interested in visiting idn sites anyway?

BTW, I also see poorly targeted Google ads about Miami and Californai hotels.

 

[Olney]

Again I'll say look at the situation from the target market's standpoint.
The Japanese version of IE7 will be able to go to Japanese IDNs & resolve them by default without an error.
Russian version will do Russian
Chinese will do Chinese by default.
Other languages are a security risk to them.
There is a lot of progression made to make them better for the target users.

 

[domainstosell]

Bad news for you. I just tried to visit your idn url above from my newly installed explorer-7 browser but my pc makes a beep and then displays a warning message saying "The website contains characters or letters that can not be displayed using my current settings."

I understand that, but I assume you are using an American computer? The URL is French.

There is a zero chance I will decide to change my IE7 settings and also doubt many others will change the settings! Why would I bother to change my settings (and possibly have security risks, maybe invoving phishing) when I am not interested in visiting idn sites anyway?

That's a good question; the short answer is: you wouldn't. You speak English, so you surf, read, write in English. You don't need to visit IDNs. But if you spoke only Japanese, you would want to visit a Japanese site.

Also, as far as the phishing aspect, it won't matter what your language settings for IE7 are. Mixed scripts - like the paypal spoof the media is overkilling - won't resolve from punycode at all, no matter what your language setting.

BTW, I also see poorly targeted Google ads about Miami and Californai hotels.

Yeah, it seems that Adsense takes a while to catch up for its content, and I just launched the site the other day (Friday). It's my understanding that it should become better targeted as more users visit the site.

 

[Bramiozo]

More reasons why IDN's are evil:
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2006/10/31/domain_resale_market/

And:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6099370.stm

If you try to convince people that you actually thought this through and are indeed serious about this topic then at least try to extract the arguments that these sources contain, arguments which should support your yet unsupported (and vague) claim that IE7 is a flop for idn's.

Acro, make this more than a troll please and if you can't do that just refrain from posting so this topic can be closed.

 

[Theo]

Acro, make this more than a troll please and if you can't do that just refrain from posting so this topic can be closed.

If I need a spokesperson, I will call you. Till then, I intend to continue posting per my statements above.

 

[Bramiozo]

Bad news for you. I just tried to visit your idn url above from my newly installed explorer-7 browser but my pc makes a beep and then displays a warning message saying "The website contains characters or letters that can not be displayed using my current settings."

There is a zero chance I will decide to change my IE7 settings and also doubt many others will change the settings! Why would I bother to change my settings (and possibly have security risks, maybe invoving phishing) when I am not interested in visiting idn sites anyway?

BTW, I also see poorly targeted Google ads about Miami and Californai hotels.

It doesn't mean anything what you decide to do because it's not about you, you yourself are not the market. This is a clear cut phallacy, there will always be yeas and nays. Of course this forms a threshold but how likely were you to step over it anyway being biased as you are (you even say so yourself..) ? You're a domainer as is Acroplex, the end market is about normal websurfers who are mostly oblivious to this development, speculation is about those websurfers who will pick up idn as there is a clear need for these domains in non-latin languages. You were not interested in visiting idn in the first place because you already had a professional opinion about it, you know that most idn's are undeveloped and maybe you have some irrational motives on the side, I don't know. It is very reasonable to assume that people who are unaware of any negative issues with safety assume that the possibility of even using IDN makes it an option, especially since IE7 clearly has safety features in this regard.

An url in itself doesn't pose any added threat for any user, unless certain script combinations are used, this always was a trivial problem since all scripts have a certain unicode range, that (one) trivial solution makes idn almost equal to ascii in terms of phishing potential.


I just tried to visit your idn url above from my newly installed explorer-7 browser but my pc makes a beep and then displays a warning message saying "The website contains characters or letters that can not be displayed using my current settings."


I would ask you to reconsider your statement;
I say, that if someone (a normal surfer mind you) tried to visit a site in native characters he would by definition be interested in trying idn (reasonable right?) and thus he would (most likely) click right through the pop-up which constitutes nothing more than "The website contains characters or letters that can not be displayed using my current settings.", it's nothing more than the usual microsoft user verification to initialize something so why would it deter a surfer who was intending to intentionally surf to a particular idn ?

ps. using critique on someone's website as a punchline for your argument is kinda nasty btw ray:

 

[wrdekle]

Bad news for you. I just tried to visit your idn url above from my newly installed explorer-7 browser but my pc makes a beep and then displays a warning message saying "The website contains characters or letters that can not be displayed using my current settings."

There is a zero chance I will decide to change my IE7 settings and also doubt many others will change the settings! Why would I bother to change my settings (and possibly have security risks, maybe invoving phishing) when I am not interested in visiting idn sites anyway?

BTW, I also see poorly targeted Google ads about Miami and Californai hotels.

It has been confirmed directly with MS' IE program manager dealing with how IDN resolves that this warning only occurs when the target language is not already installed. In this case, if you were French, you have the language installed as a default and you would not see this warning going straight to the site. It is a barrier for non-speakers of the language, but outside of speculators like ourselves non-speakers of the language wouldn't technically have any interest in going to the site.