Thread: Is Your Domain Relevant to India & Indians???

Hi all,

One of the things that I am seeing more and more these days is people registering and then trying to sell domain names that are not relevant to India or Indians.

I am only discussing English domains in this post and not referring to other languages such as Hindi or Bengali.

I was talking with one of my friends who is Indian about this and he agreed that people from other countries/continents such as USA or Europe assume that the English they use transfers across to India just as well, NOT SO!

Do your research on Google etc before you register or buy a name in the domain aftermarket that is useless because it is not the correct language/keyword phrase that is being used by Indians.

Here is an example of a couple of domains that I registered just the other day -

www.gymequipment.co.in
www.gymequipments.co.in

Which one do you think has the highest "exact match" monthly search volume in Google's Keyword Tool set for India??

If you chose "gym equipments" as the higher of the search phrases then you are correct and by almost double that of the phrase "gym equipment"

As I said I registered both as they both have value, when I ran this scenario by my Indian friend he completely agreed and said that this is just one example of the subtle differences in how Indians search.

Over the past 3 years of being in the Indian Domain space I have made my fare share of mistakes with targeting incorrect keyword phrases so I thought it may help others who live outside of India to double check everything and do your research before handing over the cash.

Any feedback from Indians within this forum about this subject would be welcome.

Cheers

Ed Keay-Smith
OzDomainer.com

It is an interesting and valid point Oz.

No two cultures are the same. Even though english is medium of most educational institutions and businesses, a great number of indians have adapted words and phrases in a unique way. They dont typically use British, American or even Canadian english. If you ever have the opportunity to visit or meet with some of the twenty-somethings from India, you'll notice that they punctuate their hindi or punjabi sentence with the occasional english word. Similarly, they may not use the most appropriate grammer or syntax (Equipments vs Equipment).

That being said, strong, generic words will always have some intrinsic value.

Sometimes, I see a .IN domain and don't see any immediate connection to India or Indians. For example, today it was reported that lasvegasescorts.in sold for $500. How is this domain relevant to India or Indians, or am I missing something?

Ive noticed that as well. There has been some very strong german word domain sales ending in the .in tld.

My only logical conclusion is that the keyword is somehow trumping the importance of the tld. I imagine, if there is a vital keyword that one would need for their business interests that isnt available in their country's tld, then they would be willing to get it in another.

If history is any sort of guide, globalisation has made the marketplace much smaller. There may be a time, where tlds become less important than the strong, generic keywords and the development of the domain itself.

Alternatively, I could be totally wrong and there is a strong demand for Las Vegas Escorts for German speaking indians...

@Nighthawk

Very, very funny!!

"Alternatively, I could be totally wrong and there is a strong demand for Las Vegas Escorts for German speaking indians..."

Nothing would surprise me in this day and internet age!!

Ed

"Gymequipments" is not a good keyword combination because the plural of equipment IS equipment,so thats actually incorrect english...JMO...

Originally Posted by warbux

"Gymequipments" is not a good keyword combination because the plural of equipment IS equipment,so thats actually incorrect english...JMO...

Did not want to digress but since you mentioned it and MORE ( ) importantly since I own equipments (.in), want to point out that MS WORD doesn't flag equipments as a spelling mistake.

Originally Posted by nighthawk

if there is a vital keyword that one would need for their business interests that isnt available in their country's tld, then they would be willing to get it in another.

I agree with that.
After being in business of developing and running a few blogs and driving traffic to the them through search engines, I have learnt that Search Engines pay very little significance to the TLD, unless the search query is entered in a country specific search page.

For instance, if I run a search for an India related Keyword in Google.co.in, then it may happen that sites based on .IN domains are given preference, but when I run the same search query in Google.com, the same .IN domains are not given any undue preference.

Off-course, there are riders to these statements.

Originally Posted by Ceres

Sometimes, I see a .IN domain and don't see any immediate connection to India or Indians. For example, today it was reported that lasvegasescorts.in sold for $500. How is this domain relevant to India or Indians, or am I missing something?

Well, .co.in is definitely India and lasvegasescorts.co.in would not work.

However, .in has more options for interpretation, Indiana, Indonesia, Income etc, and more generally relevant Internet.

Much as I am fan of .co.in for India, .in has more scope and can be, and is,used for other options-very versatile.

You are absolutely right. Local Indians would prefer the TLD in their local language. With ICANN´s new decision to allow countries to create non-latin TLDs, I think we will see 11 new TLDs soon - one for each script, and co.in and .in will be secondary, used only for brand protection and by Internet users outside India. I believe .中国 will be the biggest ccTLD inside the next years and the colonized .cn will be secondary

Christopher Hofman
europeandomaincentre.com/pages/news/newsletters/will_be_bigger_than_cn