Greeklish? I Prefer Greek Fish: Avoiding A Cultural Value Pit
A bargain hunter might be allured by bargain basement prices for top Greek terms. However, the low prices you are seeing are likely there for a reason as pointed out today by an interesting post on Acro.net, which is definitely worth reading and discussing.
Acro notes that Greeks don’t often type in Greek, and instead type in the Latin-based Greeklish, and he emphasizes the need to dig deeper into a language and understand a bit of its culture rather than just blindly using a dictionary and then registering an IDN.
I agree with Acro that Greek IDNs have low search volume and are not currently worth much. The lack of any medium to large Greek sales (since 2007-2008) speaks for itself on the IDN Sales Chart. More interesting to me though is exploring Acro’s good point about learning a country’s culture before you invest in it. How can a non-native learn whether a foreign language domain is worth registering? Here are some basic tools and tips:
GAKT: Google Adwords Keyword Tool might be overused and overhyped. Still it is a domainer’s best friend. Having a sense of the monthly searches for a foreign term will give you a rough sense of how valuable the term is and how often it is typed in and used. Google is not always the search engine of choice in other countries but many other search engines including Yandex (Russia) and Baidu (China) have similar tools. When I find a term with 60,000+ exact searches it is usually a very promising sign.
Wikipedia: Knowing the population of the country you are investing in, the relative wealth of the country and more about the country’s basic industries is crucial. The greater the population and the greater the wealth of the country, the more likely it is that there will be demand for foreign language names in that market. Similarly, if you are investing in oil and tourism names, it is worth knowing whether the country has active oil and tourism markets.
Dictionary: Pick a good one. It is an enormous help to use a dictionary (online or offline) that provides the part of speech and a sentence with the term in it.
Other: PPC stats and other keyword valuation tools are helpful, Google Images has saved me multiple times early on (i.e. when the dictionary confirms you are buying “Date”.com, make sure there are images of the activity rather than the fruit), and getting a native to help translate is clearly the best method when one is able to do so.
hi Aaron – I’m glad you like fish – Greek or not – it’s a great source of protein
Regarding my post, I received a couple of emails attempting to allude that I’m against IDN domains – that is not the case. I simply attempted to provide useful information about my own language and culture, and how it affects IDN registrations.
As you said, research is needed when any type of investment is about to occur, more so when the territory we’re treading is unfamiliar.
To further guide your readers: Greek domain users will first go to an (ASCII) .gr and then to a .com – also, when registering a .gr they often ignore the .com altogether. That alone should tell potential IDN investors that even the .com as an IDN is of low value.
Thanks again for the coverage and I’d love to see sizable results that refute my position on Greek IDNs
@Acro – Thanks for the comment, and I enjoyed reading your article. I agree that Greek IDNs are not the best place to find value.
Also, I appreciate your clear statement that you are not against all IDNs, which will definitely preempt any misconceptions by readers.
I believe Asian IDN domains produce the most revenue due to the sheer amount of traffic these nations command; China, Japan, S.Korea etc. The size of the Greek Internet is very small in comparison.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Acroplex LLC, IDNBlog. IDNBlog said: Greeklish? I Prefer Greek Fish: Avoiding A Cultural Value Pit http://idnblog.com/2011/01/27/greeklish-prefer-greek-fish/ #IDN #domains [...]
[...] investor, with one of the top premium portfolios of Greek IDNs. Recently in response to posts here and on Acro.net, John showed me his proof of revenue from the last year. I was impressed that a [...]
[...] investor, with one of the top premium portfolios of Greek IDNs. Recently in response to posts here and on Acro.net, John showed me his proof of revenue from the last year. I was impressed that a [...]
[...] investor, with one of the top premium portfolios of Greek IDNs. Recently in response to posts here and on Acro.net, John showed me his proof of revenue from the last year. I was impressed that a [...]
[...] investor, with one of the top premium portfolios of Greek IDNs. Recently in response to posts here and on Acro.net, John showed me his proof of revenue from the last year. I was impressed that a [...]