Which is Worth More: SEO.ME or SEO.CO.NZ?

When the .ME landrush began I thought it would be possible to get a couple fun names like SEO.ME and QUIZ.ME for about $200 each. Boy was I wrong! Look at these .ME domain auction prices...

I have seen far better .info (and sometimes .net and .org) names with far more resonance go for prices far below these prices. Many international CCTLD names are dirt cheap. It is hard to find an online market more saturated than the search engine optimization field, and yet SEO.CO.NZ is already well ranked in Google New Zealand for SEO while having a buy it now price of $10,000 NZD, which amounts to $7,251.78 USD.

The .ME prices bode well for strong launches of future extensions like .web and .blog...but most new extensions will be at best marginal successes, especially given that Google is not likely to trust most of them.

Published: August 7, 2008 by Aaron Wall in domain names

Comments

beachbum305
August 7, 2008 - 2:45pm

I am definitely surprised by some of these .ME auction prices. I just checked the list again and as of 9:40 EDT insure.me is now at $38,560. The highest price is now for oglasi.me at $40,004. Crazy...

DaveN
August 7, 2008 - 3:06pm

fuck.me .. that's all I can say

BradleyT
August 7, 2008 - 3:24pm

Should buy some apple stock

Since they own me.com and once places like insure.me start advertising everyone is going to type insure.me.com

Richard
August 7, 2008 - 3:38pm

I wish Frank Schilling was still posting :-(

From what I can see Google is dividing the market up, because the wider the market, the more niches, the more money it can make.

Therefore it's going to promote CCTLDs for each country. Long-term, .com will probably lose significance. Already Google.co.uk has what - 90%? - of market share. A few years ago it was only 10%. With a bit of IP detection Google goes out of its way to make sure that UK users use Google.co.uk - it's a struggle for anyone non-technical to get to Google.com That means a generation of users are going to become conditioned to typing in .co.uk instead of .com This effect will be even greater in countries such as Australia which have pretty strict rules about who can own .com.au (I think you have to be running a business?)

But extensions like .me? Novelties? It depends how Google wants to condition us.

What interests me is which way the .coms are going to go. They might be default for the USA, but will they be allowed to rank in other countries? They do a bit. A search for 'flowers' in various country-specific Googles shows at the moment they're still given weight.

Jackthelad
August 7, 2008 - 4:05pm

The .ME Auction site seems to be accepting bids in final 24 hours, which, then result in an extension of another 24 hours.

This could be more of an endurance test for the interested bidders. Wonder when those bidding in the "never-ending auction" will actually see the value of their domain.

On a lighter note, I came across a bit of a fun competition from a UK Domain name company:
http://www.lcn.com/me_domain_registration

DaveN... I'm not sure if your suggestion would be a very unique one ;)

Motion
August 7, 2008 - 4:47pm

I am sure there will be nich sites for me, but i cant see it getting great exposure.

Aron, yahoo seemed to change its algorithms. 1 of my sites disappeared from it. Any thoughts on yahoo changes?

David
August 7, 2008 - 5:32pm

Fuck me is all I can say too

evilgreenmonkey
August 7, 2008 - 6:04pm

I've got searchmarketing.me, tempted by seo.me. Not sure what I'd use it for, but nice to have :D

rayofshadow
August 7, 2008 - 8:10pm

SEO.me worthed than co.nz
Ahh i tired to looking for nice domain .me :D

Geiger
August 7, 2008 - 8:45pm

Has anybody seen ANY .me domain rank in Google?

chuckallied
August 7, 2008 - 9:59pm

HA! Quality from DaveN.

Webhelp
August 8, 2008 - 12:48am

seo.co.nz has been on the market for a while now. This is the first i have seen on Trademe.

I guess it could pay for itself if you were to market it right. But you could still get decent results with a dirt cheap original domain

Brian Gilley
August 8, 2008 - 12:56am

"The .ME prices bode well for strong launches of future extensions like .web and .blog...but most new extensions will be at best marginal successes, especially given that Google is not likely to trust most of them."

Well put. I got sucked into buying ...uh, huh.. several, yeah several .ME domains - some good 3 and 4 letter ones to boot.

It didn't surprise me when Google purged .infos back in May. I've seen this trend with other .TLDs over the past year or so.

Gotta love the marketing spin though from domain companies regarding buying .ME domains. They make it seem like .ME domains are personalized and created "just for you." Hense the "ME" - too funny ;-)

I think people forget .ME is an TLD that has been assigned to Montenegro - not to the .ca .jp or .co.uk.

Therefore, it seems that Google would automatically "assign" a filter on this .TLD right from the go. Of course, with enough $$$$$$ and creativity, I feel a .ME can rank well enough even in Google.com.

Brian Gilley
August 8, 2008 - 1:01am

@Geiger

Yes, some are ranking for two and three phrase terms, some with over 2mil results. I got some just from searching G for site:.me

Example:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q=site%3A.me&as_qdr=m2&b...

jaybong
August 8, 2008 - 1:19am

I actually bought sem.co.nz about a year ago for US$3000 so it's good to see seo.co.nz has a decent price. SEM is used more and more to describe the search marketing profession so hopefully the investment will pay off. I might put a bid in and dominate the NZ market :)

August 8, 2008 - 2:02am

Nice buy jaybong.

websitedesigner
August 8, 2008 - 1:40am

The .me names are going like hot cakes right now. But I'm not sure how valuable they'll be in the future. Will they retain their original market value or will that drop? I'm thinking it might drop as I don't see what makes .me that much different than some of the other nontraditional TLDs.

Of course I could be wrong - it's just a prediction on my part.

Another thing I don't know of any standout (well known) websites based off .me but maybe it's to early for that. And I haven't really seen any in the SERPs or for at least what I'm looking at.

seoinabruzzo
August 8, 2008 - 7:01am

I think that this new tld it's a foul. Just few minutes after I got the notice that this tld was born, I started looking for a provider where to buy some extension.

I cannot under estimate the symbolism that .me domain transmit and the possible usage. So I looked for dozens of possible interesting words, and they always was blacklisted and not available.

semanjoe
August 8, 2008 - 2:37pm

Seriously!

I did a snowboarding season in Queenstown and promised myself I would return....

I need to give this some proper thought.

I am fed up with british women and London is too smoggy.

Hmmm.... let's see

bookworm.seo
August 8, 2008 - 8:13pm

@Richard - look at seo in google.ca .

A majority of gTLDs on p1, from what I see. Besides wikipedia , there's (in order of .com) myself, nvi solutions, toronto web services, and web designer wall (secretly an Aaron Wall property??) then seochat. The ccTLD has searchengineoptimizationcompany.ca (aka seo internet marketing inc aka seo expert (TM) lol) seocompany.ca (separate company) and optimization.ca which is the same company as searchengineoptimizationcompany.ca

@Aaron - All these releases (.Asia, .aero, .travel) are money grabs selling fool's gold largely to people hoping to get rich by pioneering a new space. How much are .cc and .ws worth again? .TV only caught on cuz it makes sense and existed and is being hard-promoted by various streaming tv sites and such.

August 9, 2008 - 1:31am

.tv honestly did not catch on IMHO...even 4 letter call signal names of tv stations were recently going for like $25

Ros
August 9, 2008 - 6:58pm

I can see the value of having a verb + .me, but none of the other ones trip off the tongue. At least with a verb you have cuteness and novelty that people might remember. Without that, this tld hasn't got much going for it.

Whether .me gets devalued in Google is going to be down to price, I think. It looks as though you can pick them up fairly cheaply, which doesn't bode well.

stuart_mcilreavy
August 10, 2008 - 8:50am

Hi Aaron,

I Bid 12K for seo.asia

Think I would have got it right?

Nope, I think it went for 18 - 20K

And look at the junk they are building on it.

I think everyone understands the value of having a premium name.

But Premium name + Crap site just doesnt work.

Oh, I also disagree on the .tv thing. I think .tv is catching on and will take off.

August 10, 2008 - 8:53pm

I think web video is going to come close to catching up with TV in a less than 5 years. I saw a clown juggling fire sticks last night...a person was recording it, and he said "if you are recording this for YouTube please mention my name _____." That is a pretty powerful market position YouTube has.

I can't see seo.asia going for that much...why not just buy seo.co.nz for half the price? Asia is a big market, but then there are so many languages in Asia and the .asia extension is more for domain speculators than it is for that continent.

stuart_mcilreavy
August 29, 2008 - 7:09pm

Hi Aaron,

Im not so sure about that. The next 6 months will tell a lot.

But when we are already seeing

honda.asia
ing.asia
levis.asia

Big corporates moving in to the space, it looks positive. .mobi on the other hand.....? It sure didnt happen that fast for .mobi

kprobe
August 21, 2008 - 4:41am

What's the domain monetize.me worth to an SEO company?

August 21, 2008 - 5:01pm

Depends on how bad they want it, but probably anywhere from $100 to $2,000

technolojik
June 20, 2009 - 4:38pm

there are alot of web sites and diffrent values about web site worth on the internet, you can search "How much is my web site worth?" from google, but my favorites is hiberya.com

Add new comment

(If you're a human, don't change the following field)
Your first name.
(If you're a human, don't change the following field)
Your first name.
(If you're a human, don't change the following field)
Your first name.