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Bill
Hartzer, Senior SEO Strategist
Globerunner.com
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Adwords
marketing campaign that many maight
have expected. After seeing .coms
fare better by some measures, and
new gTLDs better by others, Hartzer
said, "We are not totally convinced that one is necessarily “better” than the other."
Hartzer
conducted his original study in May
2014 and, wondering how much
things might have changed over an
8-month period, he re-ran his
tests again last month (January
2015) and has just published the
results from the rematch on his blog
and in another extensively detailed
white paper than you can download at
no charge from a link at the
conclusion of his blog
post.
The
bottom line was that the
performance of new gTLDs has made
further inroads from a search
engine marketing standpoint vs. com
(the opposite of what we are seeing
in the domain aftermarket arena
where the .coms seem to have gotten stronger
than ever). Hartzer's
new tests showed that when comparing
the same
keyword in .com vs. a new gTLD
(i.e.,
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3CaratDiamonds.com vs.
3Carat.diamonds) the .com had a 31.76%
Conversion Rate vs. 29.11% on
.Diamonds in January. In the 2014
test .com won by a much bigger
margin - with a 52% Conversion
Rate vs. 36% on .Diamonds. As
a result Hartzer noted, "the
New gTLD is converting just as
well now as the .COM" while
it cost twice as much
to advertise the .com as the new
gTLD. So, which would you rather use for a Google AdWords campaign? A
.com domain name that costs more, or use a New gTLD domain name that costs less to use, and converts just as well as a
.com domain name?"
Most
domain investors are gauging the
success (or lack thereof) for new
gTLDs by their registration numbers
and aftermarket sales figures - both
of which naturally pale in
comparison to .com at this early
stage of the game (we are just
concluding the first year since new
gTLDs started entering general
availability). While we don't yet
know if buying new gTLDs for resale
will be a profitable pursuit,
Hartzer's study indicates those more
interesting in building online
businesses and marketing them
through search engines may be the
first to reap rewards from well
chosen new gTLD names.
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