.discount Domain Extensions

[Atlanta-SMO]

There have been several new domain extensions recently. .discount .care .attorney and even .wtf (I find that humorous).  What are the extensions that you feel will have value at least secondary to .com? I have been running different url valuators and noticed that the .discount extensions when preceded by a strong keyword for example: roof.discount are showing pretty high values. Also any city with .attorney after it...

What are your thoughts on these domain extensions?

[LesleyPaone]

From an SEO perspective I have no data. But from a user perspective I would stay away from them. It is going to take a lot of time and marketing money for companies to train people about the new extensions. It is not personally something I would want to pay for.

[Atlanta-SMO]

Lesley, could you elaborate with regards to the time and marketing money that would have to be used to train people? What would they have to train them on? I may be missing something here completely

[LesleyPaone]

In general marketing terms a lot of people are not familiar with the next extensions. Like if I tell people to go to Moz, they assume I mean Moz.com. But if I tell them to go to Moz.discount, I think a lot of people might end up going to mozdiscount.com. You will have to train people away from .com's and to use the new extension. Just generally ask the non tech people you know if they know of any domain that is on the new extensions. I honestly cannot think of one. The only one outside of .com, org, .net, com.uk I ever use is .io.

[Dr-Pete]

The jury's really still out on these, all around. As Lesley said, it depends on if and when people adopt them (on the user side), and Google often plays new domain extensions by ear. If an extension gets very spammy, they may start to see it as low-value.

My prediction is that keywords in the extension will carry some weight, but it's going to be a fairly weak signal. So "chicago-divorce.attorney" could give you a tiny boost toward ranking for "Chicago divorce attorney", but it's not going to be enough to make a difference for a competitive phrase. We're even seeing keywords in the root domain slowly losing traction as stand-alone signals. It's not enough to buy a keyword-matched domain in 2014.

If you're in a position where there's a good name available under the new extensions that fits your brand, and your options with .com's are bad, then it may be worth a shot. I certainly wouldn't dissuade someone from locking down a name under the next extensions, if the cost is reasonable. I'm just not sure I'd bet anything on the new extensions being an SEO boon.