Domains Using Extensions (eg. vit.al for vital)

[Clarkie]

Hey,

I was wondering if anyone here has ever used or thought about using a domain where the extension is part of the keyword the domain uses. I was struggling to find domains and using this method lots seem to be free.

However if this has a negative effect on anything that makes it less worth doing then I'd make sure I avoid it.

So has anyone used one or researched the topic and found anything useful?

Cheers,
Clarkie

[grynge]

The only problem I can see with them is they are country tld's and as such have varying rules for registration. Some are considerably dearer than .com's and some you can legitimately register unless you abide by the rules.

If you are looking to build sites for sale, they can also be a problem. Try legitimately selling a .com.au to someone outside Australia and it becomes a problem (I know there are ways around)

I have a few .at and they have worked out but I can't legitimately own them as I don't have an Austrian address.

[zhkoev]

If you want to have your keyword in your domain name for SEO purposes, using the extension as part of it will probably do you no good, because search engines won't recognize the keyword. E.g. vit.al won't be recognized as "vital", but as just "vit".

On the other hand this kind of domain names are quite brandable and look pretty cool.

Here's a tool for finding such domain names I've been playing with for a while.

[MrP]

If you want to have your keyword in your domain name for SEO purposes, using the extension as part of it will probably do you no good, because search engines won't recognize the keyword. E.g. vit.al won't be recognized as "vital", but as just "vit".
.

That is a very good point but doesn't the same apply for domain names that are more than one word all bunched together..? - www . keywordsomethingsomething . com

[Clarkie]

That is a very good point but doesn't the same apply for domain names that are more than one word all bunched together..? - www . keywordsomethingsomething . com

Basically you're both just guessing? :L I'd have thougth that Google is more clever than that though.

[crabfoot]

Unbunching keywords in domain names is as good as googl's parser - which is pretty good these days. Before the keyword emphasis was removed, it was acknowledged that performance of unhyphenated names was just about the same as hyphenated versions of the same name, whereas ten years ago you might have used a hyphen to improve clarity in some cases.

Now, regarding that dot. If y study Spanish, one of the first things you learn is that the Spanish treat "LL" as a separate letter. Much later in your studies, you might be told about certain words imported into Spanish which have a double L. In order to ensure proper pronunciation by Spaniards, the two Ls are separated by a full stop - you might see excel.lo on a wine label one day, that is how I found out about it.

In order to accommodate this rare Spanish practice of putting full stops in the middle of words, search engine parsers have been taught to ignore the dot if it is not followed by a space (mainly because a lot of the US speaks Spanish). So a parser will read a keyword domain name which includes the extension as both the intended keyword and as a domain - it would read vital and vit.al as being the same.