Here is why I believe .COM does not matter anymore, or let’s just say it does not matter as much as it use to. This realization started with my kids. Like many things, it is a generational issue and newer generations have outgrown the knee jerk reaction to type in .COM after a company name or word. My kids, as you will see have no preconditioned notion that every name must end in a .COM. Just like they have no idea what MS-DOS is or that I would have to use twelve 5 1/4″ floppy disks to install it over about a period of an hour. Maybe it was not twelve disks or an hour, but it sure felt like it.
Look to the Latest Generation
When domains first took off the .COM was the most prolific. All of us during that time became preconditioned to type a .COM after hearing a company name, or brand etc. My kids do not do that at all. When I sit at the computer with them I just assume they would type names into the browser bar, however to my surprise I noticed three things.
First, they prefer search engines to start their journey.
They naturally type in a search engine name and then search for the site they are looking for. If they heard about a new game or movie, website or anything else they may be interested in then they start with a search engine. Next they look at the results and choose the site. When they go back another day to find the same site they often will start again at the search engine, never really knowing what the domain name is in the address bar.
Secondly, if they hear about something they want to look up they ask the entire name.
By entire name I mean they ask for what is before and after the period. In the past I would just ask the name such as target and then type in target.com. That is not what they do, if I were to say target to them, they would as “dot what” and then proceed to type it in the browser bar.
Third, hand held devices.
Like many homes, there are desktops (apple, windows, linux), laptops (apple, windows, linux), tablets (apple and android OS), iphones and android phones, googles OS on all these devices and more. It seems the desktop computer is no longer the go to device anymore. With the smaller devices it is less likely the will type in a domain name or URL, typically they are using an application or clicking links to navigate the web and sites. Therefore the actual domain name may not matter as much anymore.
What does this mean?
There is an entirely new domain gold rush, or is there. On the one hand what if the .COM domain is not considered the only option by the latest generation? In this case the fact that new gtld’s are available may open up a huge number of additional valuable websites as the name you could not get as a .COM may be available as a .guru .photography .luxury .bike .menu and many more. However on the other hand, while it is great that you can now obtain a name you may not of been able to obtain before, it is possible they will not be worth as much as popular .COM domains once were if you are looking to sell the domain some day. If no one is paying attention to the URL of a particular website, then do they really have more or any value?
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