I wanted to make a comment about providing any information about domain/keyword/site “popularity” based on analysis of Quantcast and/or Alexa – or actually any “public/private” traffic reporting services. All of them are skewed strangely, and none of them can really provide the true facts they portend to do.

Let me try and make this point stick:

If you find a domain you like, and want to know if its site is performing, there’s no way of knowing the results are based on true visitors, such as uniques and comebacks. The domain doesn’t specifically take “all the credit” for the website’s performance, unless the site is a landing PPC page. Even then, it doesn’t take into consideration all the variables of “templinks”, “spammed backlinks”, “SEO keyword spamming” or none of the above. Alexa and Quantcast just cannot provide anyone with realistic evaluations of a domain.

The only thing that can provide you with straightforward discussion and assessment of a domain’s value is a human being that has an understanding of the language, along with social/consumer and business/tech trends, either already established through common use, or expected maturity of the trend.

In other words, experience and instinct from a human can only determine the value of a domain. I never use Alexa (used to about four years ago), and tried Quantcast but saw errors and omissions.

About the extension .org — It is absolutely the second most valuable domain extension, much more valuable than the .net, for one simple reason based on common sense marketing analysis:

.ORG domains are bought and promoted by all the major/minor non-profit organizations, and those .org domains are hoisted into the limelight constantly by the power of these organizations by the millions of dollars in advertising EVERY month.

A .net domain name is a mistake for a domainer to buy UNLESS they plan to use heavy marketing techniques to remind their visitors that the .net extension must be “remembered”, no matter how wonderfully natural the domain word/phrase is. For the user, the .org extension is a “product/service” connect naturally especially if they’ve already understood the domain represents a “non-profit” company. That doesn’t have to be true, but it’s what sells the .org

Nice article.
Stephen Douglas´s last blog ..TESTING A NEW TECHNOLOGY DOMAIN WITH A DOMAINER’S BRAIN