¿Habla Usted Dominios?
September 3, 2008 by Rick Latona
It seems to me that if you are going to have a site in German, .de domains make sense. If you are going to market to the Japanese, .jp names make sense. However, in the Spanish market, there are so many countries with their own ccTLDs that the decision is a little harder to make.
Clearly you wouldn’t want to go with .com.mx if you are building a global brand but it’s not so clear if .com or .es are better.
I for one, don’t actually own any .es names. That’s not by choice, I just haven’t had a chance to pick them up as of yet. I do, however, own thousands of Spanish language .com names.
Domainers know that .es is Spain’s extension. Do consumers know that? Would someone in Mexico enter carros.com or carros.es? Hell if I know. Please discuss because I think it’s an issue of importance for those that focus on this market.
Recently, I’ve added a global domains section to my newsletter and I am starting to get some sales in this market. Granted, I’m selling single dictionary word .com names in Spanish for only around 400-2000 dollars a pop so it is no surprise that I’m getting the sales but still, it is a sign that the market may finally be ready for more. My best Spanish names have yet to be listed.
I would be interested in seeing your single-word .COM Spanish domains. Are these viewable via a website or only via the newsletter?
Rick, how have your .com.mx domains been doing? I remember you embarking on creating mini-sites for them a while back. I figure out of anyone you would know by now what Mexicans prefer between .com and .com.mx or whatever else.
List of Spanish Domains Sold
I would say it depends on the sub-market you are targeting within the latin market. For. EG in mexico .com.mx is standard and most popular, but in other countries obviously this is not used and i would say .com is still most popular overall in the Spanish Market.
though in some countries the ccTLDs are becoming popular, Brazil for e.g is using their .br heavily. I belive Argentina is also.
I am a developer not a domainer, but perhaps my experience with Spanish language content on a dot com domain is relevant.
I have a long (1998) established site which offers mobile home repair advice. About three years ago I read all the projections for the growth of the Spanish speaking market in the USA and had all the content translated into Spanish.
Page views on the Spanish side are less than 10% of the total. After looking at these results and talking to a variety of people about them, I suspect that many Spanish speakers in the USA are illiterate in Spanish. To me this suggests a disconnect between the reported demographics of USA Spanish speakers and the actual traffic which can be anticipated. I would expect this to reduce the income potential of Spanish dot com domains targeting the USA market.
I think that the people knows too that .es is the Spain ccTLD extension.
In Venezuela, Mexico, Argentina, Brasil, etc, the most important extension after .com is the one of each country (.com.ve, .com.mx, .com.ar, .com.br, etc)
Definitely .com. The .es extension is associated with Spain, and that is far away from South America. A lot of people assume .es is for Spain and will ignore a .es commerce site, assuming it is some local biz in Spain.
Dunno how it is for Mexico, but I’m speaking for many in Chile and Argentina.
As a Mexican I can tell you that, at least in this Spanish speaking corner of the world, mexican nationals prefer .com and .com.mx domains over anything else. Mexicans always search for both .com and .com.mx domains.
Besides the .com TLD, we have the same reality in Mexico you saw while vacationing in Spain. Companies and businesses always register their brands with the .com.mx extension. Coca-Cola, Nissan, VW, etc…
Mexicans would not search .es websites as it is clear to us that it will bring up a site from Spain. Just like Americans would not normally search for a .ca or .co.uk ccTLD when looking for content relevant to Americans.
Hope this helps to shed some light on the topic!
Well, here’s my 2 cents……..I think that if you live in the United States, you type in “blank.com”, but if you live in the United Kingdom, you type “blank.co.uk”, and if you live in Spain, you type “blank.es”, etc. etc. In other words, you use the ccTLD of whatever country you live in (out of loyalty and pride for your country). I feel that the world was using .com when that was the only thing available, but now they use their own country codes. Since just about every “.com” is taken, eventually we will be using a lot more “.us” here in the United States.
As far as Spanish ccTLD’s go, I think it would be prudent to take the domain name in every Spanish ccTLD where people would be interested in it. This way, someone in Mexico doesn’t have to know about “blank.es”. They can just type “blank.com.mx”, like they normally do.
Rick,
We own about 80 generic .coms. A number of them (25%?) get steady type-in traffic - nothing serious, but it’s there for certain products/services. It’s tough to say where these folks are coming from, but I’d say for certain Spanish domains, a .com extension makes more sense than a ccTLD regardless of the country. After all, “comercial” is a cognate of “commercial,” so .com means something to Spanish speakers the world over. That said, those visitors want to be able to order products/services in their own country (or get them shipped there), so the owner of a Spanish .com offering physical products would need to have a global distribution system knocked on the head. These days, that’s not too big a deal, depending on the product.
One thing that Spanish domain owners are challenged by (at least we are) is the difficulty of monetizing the traffic. If you have such domains parked (even at a place like TrafficZ that allows you to define keywords), there are so few advertisers bidding on Spanish keywords that it’s tough to offer relevant ads for visitors to click. I’ve posted on forums asking if anyone knows of a Spanish ad network, but so far I have not been able to find one. Perhaps I haven’t looked hard enough?
At any rate, the following Spanish .coms are among our best, and if you’re in the habit of sending out a list to potential buyers, perhaps you’d consider putting these on that list (sales prices to be determined):
Absintio.com (absinthe - anise flavored liqueur)
AparatoAuditivo.com (hearing aid)
CanaDePesca.com (fishing pole - in English, this sold November ‘07 for $58,000 via Moniker)
CanasDePesca.com (fishing poles)
PianoDeCola.com (grand piano)
SoftwareEconomico.com (economic, or discount, software)
SoftwareEducativos.com (educational software)
Thanks for getting this discussion going . . .
Bob Amend
DKH Domains
Rick,
Not sure what the answer is .es or .com.mx. Personally, .TV has some great opportunity in this space as renewals are low and awareness is rising. Great generics that have relevance to online media. Examples include:
carros.tv
hola.tv
tu.tv
foros.tv
casa.tv
futbol.tv
I have a couple of domains for mexico my.com.mx and mexico.com.mx to promote our services. I don’t expect them to be valuable at this time. I’ll wait for 5-10 years before I can get a decent offer.
Cheers,
EM
NO BODY IN MEXICO WILL EVER USE CARROS.ES INSTEAD OF CARROS.COM . You said it .es is for Spain only!
Keep an eye on .com.es domains, their prices are going Up!
By the way DKH: how much you think this domain is woth: TransferenciaBancaria.com (bank transfer).
Thanks,
Omosquera,
As with most pricing of Spanish domains, it’s difficult to say what TransferenciaBancaria.com is worth. It would seem like it should be worth a decent amount of money considering the keywords, but a name like that would require a whole lot of development work in order for it to reach its true potential. The Google page results are impressive at over 10 million for the quoted term. But Google also reports only 140 searches on average per month. That’s not a whole lot of people.
Therefore, if I were pricing this for sale to another domainer, I might ask for low to mid XXX USD. If I were selling the heck out of it to an end user, I might ask for low X,XXX USD.
But as I said, pricing Spanish domains is a little on the tough side - especially for us non-native speakers ;-).
Bob
Leonard, I don’t really send out lists. You can see the names on a daily basis one at a time through the newsletter.
Tony, my .mx names are doing better and better and they were a good investment but I don’t think they are relevent here. My question is about which is better for a global brand in Spanish,.com or .es?
Thanks everyone else for your comments. I’m feeling pretty good about my .coms now.
Much better is spanish-domain.com
or .com.ve
I guees .com is still the king in Spanish for global branding.}
Here in LATAM .es is clearly remarked as Spain!
If you want to reach the whole Spanish speaking market definitively stick to .com. However, .es domains are increased value pretty quickly as many Spanish users are starting to type-in .es rather than .com (similar to what happens with .de domains in Germany). Though traffic will always be lower than the .com version PPCs are usually higher and Conversion Rates too.
If you are just looking for traffic then always pick the .com version. On the other side, if you look into the ccTLDs (not only .es but also .com.mx or even .cl, etc.) there are still pretty good deals out there.
Are you allowed to buy .es? I was searching the other day, and i was told that in order to buy a .es domain, you have to be spanish citizen, live in Spain or if you’re not spanish and you Live out of Spain, you can only buy the .es domain if you have a business with Spain, or have a website to promote spanish language or culture.
Every time i search at ccTLD’s i see a lot of restriction, but then i see a lot of non residents of those countries acquiring those ccTLD’s, what’s the trick guys? how do you go around legislation?
Thank you