Owning a ton of domain names

[ScottOlson]

I have a question really a matter of opinion for those other SEO's and marketers out there. One of the companies I work for has a ton of domains, just about every variant and international version of its domain name. Do you think there is real value to owning something like .mobi? It's not a mis-spelling variant and as I understand it the forwarded domain means nothing to Google. It's also not much used, so what is the point of spending thousands of dollars to own all these variations?

[aap82]

I think the only value is as if you want to create and expand your brand name and you don't want future webs using your name i guess

[ScottOlson]

That's what I would think and I do think it makes sense for popular domain names like co.uk, com.cn, etc. But I wonder if there is really any value to some of the obscure ones at all? There are so many domain extensions out there and they come out with more all the time, is it really necessary or strategically beneficial to buy them all up just because the competition may do so? Is there any other benefit to having them?

[aap82]

I don't think there are any benefits. I would just buy the main ones: .com .net .org .info

[HashtagHustler]

Hey there,

I am in a similar situation and I have posted about it on these boards. If your company can afford it, it is probably in your best interest to just hold onto them. At the same time, as you stated, all this can change in an instant. Take .mobi for example, that was supposed to be the mobile browser extension, but clearly with responsive design, there isn't as much of a need for the .mobi in my opinion.

On the flip side, Google keeps doing more and more towards local, or so it seems. So having the domains in other countries, may become more beneficial. I have all of our extensions forwarding to our primary domains.

My personal opinion is the vanity domains aren't going to take off. Everybody was so excited with the .tv extension for example, but once people find a way to keep all of that, or display similar information on a .com it becomes useless. There used to be benefit to having a .org, and people realized it was being abused. Now the only other benefits are .edu and .gov, because there are restrictions to owning them.

If you can, keep them, it certainly doesn't hurt. Is it going to make or break your company by not having them? Probably not, but it could save you a headache later down the road.

Hope that helps.

[EGOL]

what is the point of spending thousands of dollars to own all these variations?

I would allow them to expire and spend the savings on beer.

[MonicaOConnor]

I would give this two thumbs up if I could.

There really is no point. There is no value except maybe preventing others from buying them, but what is the risk if they did?

[EGOL]

Thanks!  

I have a couple domains that I paid five digits for the domain only.   For those domains, if I could get the .org and the .net for a reasonable cost, I would buy them.  But, they were registered and gone a long time ago.  I would not pay a $12.50 per year registration fee for a domain extension from another country.

If you have thousands of people per month typing your domain into search and addresses boxes then registering and redirecting typos is more valuable.

[ScottOlson]

Thanks for the replies everyone. I think I'll continue buying up "important" domains in foreign countries but ignore and let some of these expire that are vanity/not-used.

I definitely agree on the mis-spelling issue, I have bunch of domains that cover a mis-spelling. In our Analytics one of the top ten queries is a mis-spelling of the company name.