After spending a week in Germany I think it’s safe to say that .DE > .COM there, and Dashes are in

I just spent a week in Germany, somehow after traveling Internationally pretty regularly for 15+ years I never made it there. The world is a big place and given that Sonos had a separate office and team for Europe (I focused on Asia, Australia, and Latin America) Germany never made it on my itinerary.

Now, Bold Metrics is expanding into Europe and I had my first client meeting in Germany last week and just landed in The Netherlands for another meeting tomorrow. While in Germany I noticed:

  1. It’s really cold…but not as cold as Canada which I compared the weather to on a daily basis.
  2. .DE is everywhere and it’s actually hard to find a .COM domain name anywhere
dot-de-domains

Another thing I noticed in Germany is a strong interested in domains with dashes in them. We had coffee at a popular coffee shop called Einstein Kaffee, honestly they’re everywhere, like Starbucks in the US (or at least in Berlin they were). I was surprised to see that they didn’t have EinsteinKaffee.de, but when I checked I realized, nobody had that domain, they wanted the domain with a dash in it and could care less about having the two-word .DE.

I also probably can’t go another day without sharing what might just be the most hilarious billboard I’ve ever seen. Spotted this on the train ride from Nuremberg to Berlin.

german-billboard

If you take a look at Verisign’s latest report .DE came in as the third most-registered ccTLD behind .CN and .TK with 16.2M .DE registrations. While sometimes I think to myself when I’m traveling, “I should buy some ccTLDs from this country!” I usually stop myself. The reality is, I don’t know the German language and I don’t know the German domain market, and when it comes to domains I find it’s best to stick to what you know, which for me is .COM.

That being said, I’ve met some Domainers who have done well with .DE and if you’re one of them, I’d love to hear more about your experiences in the German domain market. Also, let me know if you think my observations are correct that .DE really is stronger than .COM in Germany and that dashes are cool as a cucumber.

I want to hear from you, comment and let your voice be heard!

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton