As a ccTLD investor I am always trying to determine what people in another country are searching for or typing-into their browsers. One of the first ccTLDs I ever registered was CricketGames.co.in – this was also my first ccTLD to get a steady flow of type-in traffic.
My portfolio currently spans over twenty TLD’s with .com’s making-up less than 10% of my portfolio. I’m always happy to tell people – “I’m a BIG believer in ccTLD’s!”
As an SEO geek I thought I would share a quick tip that can help any ccTLD investor ensure they are buying domains that has good search traffic in their respective country. Remember – just because a certain term or phrase is popular in the U.S. doesn’t mean it is necessarily popular in Canada, Mexico, or Germany!
Did you know that when you use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool you can actually view search volume from specific countries in a specific language? That means if you found a .in that you think is going to be a hit in India – you can check the search volume first to see if it really is as popular as you think it is.
When you login to the Google Adword Keyword tool you will see the following text above the search box:
This means the the Local Search Results you are shown will be for people using Google in the United States and searching in English.
What if you want to search for a word or phrase in English but see the search volume in Australia? Or a Spanish word on Google in Mexico?
It’s easy to do but most people miss this little option that is a BIG deal when it comes to ccTLDs (or non-English .com’s!)
Just click the “Edit” link next to United States and you will then see a menu allowing you to pick a language and a country:
That’s it! It’s easy to do and if you’re buying ccTLDs this will be essential data to help drive your purchase decisions.
There are many more ways that I research my ccTLD investments but I wanted to cover this topic today as it is an important part of the process. Enjoy and happy ccTLDing!
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Excellent tip, I always use that and surprised at how many people don’t know to change the location. That’s a nice Cricket name Morgan. Best of luck with the name.
Hi Bruce.
Agree, GAKT is a great resource for finding both ccTLD domains and others. I always use it when scanning for swedish domain names.
Writing a simple PHP script would enable you to automatically check availability using downloaded CSV files from GAKT. Saves a lot of reseach time for me.
Hi Morgan,
I was not aware of this feature, and I am sure it will be very helpful to me in the future. Thank you very much for this tip.
Have a great day,
Dick St Cyr
ha, that is funny. I never even knew about that menu. What I have always done instead is go up to the address bar and replace .com with the cctld for whatever country i want to look at, then refresh the page. then you have to know what all the menu options are by heart since it will often be in another language or IDN
Thanks for the positive comments everyone.
@Johan – great point about creating a PHP script to check availability!
How does CCTLD’s do in terms of traffic? I guess its depending on countries, but do people worldwide commit to direct navigation?
Adsense pay well for Indian traffic?
Best to assume on average 15% of traffic is direct nav.
AdSense can pay very well for Indian traffic – it all depends on the category
Looks like it will should close as the nominet email came accepting transfer. I regged FreeTea dot co dot uk on Feb 18 and got offer and sold through sedo Mar 2. First cctld sale outside of .us and .tv which I do not consider a cctld except for the technicality. This ties in with your post that I checked the Google Keyword Tool and adjusted for the UK, it was only 260 exact, but sometime you got to go with your belief. I just thought Tea is huge in UK, Free is huge everywhere. Sale price was 1000 pounds.
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