Personally I tend to agree, these are largely flavour of the months domains in my view,

In my opinion, observing from the sidelines, majority of the people who promote Geo domains are doing so not because Geo is doing great but because they are invested in Geo.
............

The more important question about Geo is are they making money today? Dr. Kevin Ham, in a recent DNJournal article, said it elegantly:

"We are building a new advertising and retail platform through Vancouver.com. The ambition and initiative is huge and if we can make it work for our city, then we can build it for the rest of the world. Geo domains are asset rich but cash flow poor. So if we can change that paradigm into one that is cash flow rich, then we will raise the level for all geo domains."

(emphasis added)

Note that in reality, today, Geo is a poor performer................

http://www.conceptualist.com/2008/05...r-side-of-geo/

Personally I like them, but moreso in terms of the development model vs relying on continued growth in value in the domainer market.

The development route for them is easy to grasp and as long as the tld is relevant and recognised to aid in credibility in its target market then they make sense from the pov of selling advertising etc.

As to whether people are overpaying based on end user demand/relative to other domains then that's a different question and is really a case by case thing.

Mostly agree with Safe above.

I like geo-targeted names (city+service) more than just geo (city) ones. Geo-targeted carry less risk of getting claimed by a city government and are still cheap unlike 'on fire' geo names.

I love geo-targeted domains, also for development purposes.

I think geo-targeted are good and getting better......I know because I have sold more geo-targeted names than non-geo ones this year.

craigslist.org dominates the local classified markets of most US cities and they just use sub-domains (cityname.craiglist.org) to do this. they built the simplest of sites, made it incredibly easy to use and then got out of the way. this is one of the greatest success stories of the internet to date, all without a killer (geo)domain in any of the 100s of markets that they dominate.

to me the great idea, well executed & timed is what matters. if that happens on a name like craigslist.org or sanfrancisco.com then so be it, but I do think that we in the domain business get that idea transposed often enough.

what if craig newmark never launched craiglist.org because he couldn't afford $40K for SFclassifieds.com or bayarea.com or sanfrancisco.com and got caught up in that drama instead of focusing on his great idea?

IMO, overvalued a lot at this time. If I owned some of those million $ geo names such as Vancouver.com I wold be trying to sell what with concerns the Snowe Bill means governments could potentially take the names away if they wanted them (from what I recall re its scope).

Originally posted by DS_Chris
craigslist.org dominates the local classified markets of most US cities and they just use sub-domains (cityname.craiglist.org) to do this. they built the simplest of sites, made it incredibly easy to use and then got out of the way. this is one of the greatest success stories of the internet to date, all without a killer (geo)domain in any of the 100s of markets that they dominate.

to me the great idea, well executed & timed is what matters. if that happens on a name like craigslist.org or sanfrancisco.com then so be it, but I do think that we in the domain business get that idea transposed often enough.

what if craig newmark never launched craiglist.org because he couldn't afford $40K for SFclassifieds.com or bayarea.com or sanfrancisco.com and got caught up in that drama instead of focusing on his great idea?

Very true , however this is an exception...

Not even Craig envisioned how big they would grow to be...
a combination of a great idea, fillin a need, right place/rigth time and tremendous "hands-on in-hosue" execution.

In a way is like pulling del.icio.us as a metric of the .us extension success.

The Big Plus Premium Geo domains have going IMO it's their memorability (recall) since they are already positioned (the proof is in the nice type-ins), it makes marketing a lot easier , of course that is not guarantee of success...

Originally posted by DS_Chris
.to me the great idea, well executed & timed is what matters. if that happens on a name like craigslist.org or sanfrancisco.com then so be it, but I do think that we in the domain business get that idea transposed often enough.

Oh great now I have to go shopping for something to frame that in

Very well said DS

so said the person linking to parked page

www.cowboys.com

still

Originally posted by zouzas
so said the person linking to parked page

www.cowboys.com

still

Down Down Down shes goes ..

http://www.quantcast.com/cowboys.com/traffic

Originally posted by bidawinner
Down Down Down shes goes ..

http://www.quantcast.com/cowboys.com/traffic

loss of 50k visitors monthly??? is that right


wonder if they fore saw such a loss by coevrting to ppc?

Originally posted by zouzas
loss of 50k visitors monthly??? is that right


wonder if they fore saw such a loss by coevrting to ppc?

I would imagine so, short term search engine traffic adds no real value to a name like that.

Well you have to understand that it's the offseason for the NFL. When the name was getting 50,000 visitors the cowboys were playing playoff games.... This is a normal drop if you look at other similar NFL related sites when comparing in-season to out-of-season.

Just like I am sure ChristmasGifts.com has a spike during christmas season.. You don't think that that particular name gets traffic in May do you? Santa don't play that way

Originally posted by Acquisition
Well you have to understand that it's the offseason for the NFL. When the name was getting 50,000 visitors the cowboys were playing playoff games.... This is a normal drop if you look at other similar NFL related sites when comparing in-season to out-of-season.

Thanks for the info.

This is a more accurate assessment when looking at the link below, and going by the last 12 months instead of the last 6 months.. As you can see, when NFL training camp starts in July, the numbers start to climb and then start to dip in January when the season ends-

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/cowboys.com/?metric=uv

This is normal for all teams and NFL related sites throughout the league... As a matter of fact, here is the same graph using the actual NFL.com site- you will see the exact same pattern-

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/nfl.com/?metric=uv

And here's another for the Patriots, who were in the super bowl this year-- you see the same pattern again--

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/pat...com/?metric=uv

So the Cowboys.com numbers dipping is not an anomaly. In fact, it's totally normal for this time of year.


.

Originally posted by Acquisition

So the Cowboys.com numbers dipping is not an anomaly. In fact, it's totally normal for this time of year.

.

nice info,,plus it wouldnt take much effort development wise to exceed the past numbers