IDN Domain Blog about Japanese Domains
My good friend Steve Karnas was interviewed on IDNBlog.com. You can see the interview from the link below. Good to see the people in Japan who are active in domain being recognized. Congrats Steve… We are always talking about ways to expand the market from years back, Wixi really helps & already is making strides.
http://idnblog.com/2010/06/29/idnblog-exclusive-ed-russel-steve/
You can go to Wixi’s Site at http://park.wixi.jp/
Here a few Japanese IDNs for sale. As many of you know I don’t really list too many of my domains for sale. So if anyone reading my blog is interested. Feel free to email me or use the contact form here. These are a few domains that I really see that I won’t develop any time soon as they don’t fit in the batches I want to develop.
アイコラ.com $5,000 Idol Collage – high searched adult term referring to Japanese idols heads on nude bodies I might own the .jp too
胸チラ.com $5,000 – Nip Slips – high searched adult term
ブックマーク.com $5,000 – Bookmark actually has daily typein
ジュース.com $5,000 – Juice – main term for juice
ウーロン茶.com $2,000 – Oolong Tea – really popular tea for Japanese
顎.com $500 – Chin (I was thinking of plastic surgery when I registered this)
自動車趣味.com $500 – Automobile Hobby (Overture used to be super high)
スポーツ新聞.com $500 – Sports Newspaper (Overture was super high)
テレビ局.com $2,000 – TV station (High Overture probably still)
Message me from now till end of July. I might do a deal on a few but these are my base prices.
Also I don’t list anywhere except for my blog for right now for these. I can also look up the current Overture search queries for the terms.
I haven’t tested it myself yet but I would recommend IDN Domain developers to upgrade to the Google Analytics asynchronous code.
There were at least a few issues over the years with the old Google analytics code for both mobile & PC sites.
One of the main problems with IDNs & Google Analytics was
All IE versions were shown as IE6.
I resolved this last year but it’s better to just try the new code.
If you still want to use the old code then here’s the fix.
It’s pretty simple.
You have to change the code setDomain to “none”
pageTracker._setDomainName(“none”);
originally it doesn’t have have none.
Anyway this is just one fix but the new code from Google may be a little bit better for you guys.
Just writing for those who want to control their domains.
It’ll be good if in the future I go through some sites & see my fixes..
After implementing this you will see that IDNs are not being viewed only on IE6
NameDrive came out with an official post about Wixi. The very first domain parking program for Japan. This is something that we in Japan have needed for years. Let me get this straight though. There are domainers in Japan. Many have frustrations on having to use English interfaces to park their domains. Others simply don’t park.
Now that Wixi is here I know it will expand the market. There’s a team of really good guys behind Wixi. If you want to see who two of the team look like read this post. We hang out in Tokyo last month.
http://www.idntalk.com/domain-names/domain-legends-in-japan.html
You can Get to Wixi from Here
One of the topics I’ve been hesitant to write about is mobile developments. Unfortunately I find that domainers (Domain investors) especially the more well known individuals don’t develop for mobile or even have mobile as a part of their strategy.
Most of my sites that I’ve created are mobile compatible & they have been for years. Yes years. One of my IDN sites gets 10X more traffic via mobile compared to PC.
Some people’s impression of mobile is iPhone equals mobile. Just because iPhone users are able to view your site via full browser doesn’t make it mobile compatible. Actually you are loosing control of your traffic.
One example to explain this is if you search for a site using Google while on a mobile phone the site will render via Google’s mobile rendering technology. If the site is mobile compatible a mark will show that it’s a mobile site. Even if your site is viewed via Google’s mobile rendering it doesn’t guarantee users will see the most recent content, nor does it guarantee this data will show up in your analytics data.
Google Analytics for mobile is a beast itself & I’ve had to modify the code (with the help of bugging Google people) years ago. Hate to say it but it’s seems like by the time domainers get to develop for mobile even high school students will be developing mobile sites.
This is not a backlash but hopefully a wake up for IDN Domain owners & domainers. The surprising thing is of all the domain blogs, forums, & sites out there Rick Schwartz is the only domain blog that I’ve seen that has a mobile version. There’s also one domainer I’ve found who’s site is mobile enhanced. I couldn’t really write this before as before the upgrade this was one of my few sites that wasn’t mobile compatible.
I really think if the people in advertising & marketing don’t understand something, most likely clients will not really hear about them. I decided to produce a casual mixer for advertising professionals in Japan. Initially it’s a Tokyo event but I’ll probably extend it to other countries later. It’s called Agency Night.
If any of you are in Tokyo on June 17th please stop by.
For full info go to
This event is not IDN related but the subject might come up once in a while about domain marketing.
So far friends & associates from Hakuhodo, DAC, Dentsu, Mindshare, MediaCom, JWT, Olgilvy, Proximity, Beacon will be attending.
This morning while taking the train I shot a quick video with the train ads with IDNs in the search results. Currently Google is doing a tie up with Hotpepper for the content & because of HotPepper there are thousands of restaurants using IDN.jps for their site listings. I’ll try to get a better version later (& long). For now here’s a quick look. The zooming up was not done by me it’s in the commercial. If you repost I’d appreciate if you credit my blog. Thank You
I was riding the train when I noticed that video ads for Google for their Gourmet services commercial featured a lot of HotPepper’s IDN URLs in the results. I’ve searched & searched but I’m not able to find that video in the Google Youtube channel. I’ll try to take a video of it.
I guess I’ll have to make a new category for the blog “IDNs in Media” or something like that.
Where dost thou IDN traffic come from?
One of the key things I really remember from many domainers is the term “type in traffic”. Working on client campaigns online I’d probably be fired if I told them that they are getting conversions from type-ins. This would actually only lead to more work for myself if the domain is not their brand name. To be honest, to be totally honest, I don’t believe in type in traffic. I do believe in keyword redirects because of browsers. I do believe in users typing in a keyword & domain extension because they saw it before. I do not believe in people spending their day typing in a keyword, putting a domain extension at the end, pulling out their credit card & making a purchase.
Being the person running campaigns for clients & doing analytics for the results, I always look at my domains & want to see why the high traffic Japanese IDNs get their traffic. I want to share a few techniques with you to see how you can determine where your traffic is coming from.
1. In Google.co.jp & Yahoo.co.jp search for the term with the extension with & without exact quotes. Sometimes there’s a site that has a really similar name or even so the exact name. I have at least 5 .jps that some companies have gotten ASCII domains & branded the site as my IDN domain.
2. Use this tool
http://www.romaji.org/
Put in your keyword & it will give you what the letters are in Romaji (Roman alphabet). Use this to search for the keyword & extension. Also if it’s a dot jp be sure to look for .ne.jp, .co.jp also.
Sometimes a keyword does have redirect traffic because it’s just that big of a keyword. A few of my domains like Anime had over 1,500,000 search queries on Yahoo last month. I think when I first registered the domain it was an average of just over 1,000,000 queries but these kinds of keywords Apple’s safari browser still redirects to the dot com. The keywords that Yahoo queries are over 1,000,000 search queries a month will have browser redirected traffic.
This may not apply to every market but I hope you can take these techniques & make your portfolio better. After you know where you are getting traffic you may be able to optimize it’s potential.
When I was working at a Japanese search marketing company my sempai (senior coworker) told me some great advice about Japanese mentality. He told me that if I were to buy domains think about a mask. He told me think the real world & the internet separately. Think about services that people would want to use privately & not really let anyone know they are using. These types of services will dominate the internet.
At the time of my coworker telling me this the loan rates in Japan were being stabilized so many on the corner loan shops physically closed. He is one of the reasons why I immediately went for some of the top loan related terms. The other categories I thought this would apply for Japan would be gambling, & adult terms. I do have a few premium adult terms but it’s not exactly what I personally have interest in.
Gambling domains were a bit of an interest for me but also even though I have a mahjong table downstairs in my house I’m not really into gambling either. Even if I wasn’t into gambling I still was able to register such keywords as backgammon, blackjack, bingo, craps, & roulette.
I know that my portfolio is mainly Japanese but hopefully readers can use these techniques to apply the methods to markets you want to invest in. Each market is different so there are certainly advantages to thinking a bit different.