WS Domains
I was recently browsing the GoDaddy website and saw that they have added another country-specific domain name to their top level domain list. The .WS domain extension is obviously nothing new since it was developed in the year 2000, but domain registrars have found a way to advertise and brand this extension to customers – .ws = WebSite.
I am normally against companies marketing country-specific domain names like .tv (for the islands of Tuvalu) and .co (for the Republic of Colombia), so my first impression of the .ws domain extension was not a good one. Google normally gives favoritism to country domains in the country that they have been assigned to. For example, if you are searching on Google.co.uk for the term “web hosting”, you will be given UK-based web hosting companies with the domain extension co.uk, but if you search for the same term on Google.com, you will be given US-based companies with the domain extension .com. That’s not to say that I never see co.uk websites in my Google.com searches, but Google favors the country that you are searching from. So if that system holds true everywhere, country-based domains like .tv, .co, and .ws will have an obvious disadvantage.
What Country Is .ws?
The .ws domain extension was founded by Michael Starr and Alan Ezeir in 2000. The extension was intended for use in Western Samoa, but the co-founders knew that it could have a dual meaning of “website”.
Reasons To Register a .ws Domain
There are a few reasons to register a .ws domain, but I would have to say the most significant one is the availability of high-quality domain names. If you visit the Premium Domains page on the Website.ws page, you will find that domains like dog.ws, clemson.ws, and betterdomains.ws are all available. I’m not sure of the value of a domain like dog.ws, but I’m sure if you get quality backlinks and write great content, you will make money for sure.
Another good reason to register a .ws domain name is to protect your brand. I have seen domains like kia.ws that are available to be purchased by anyone. Technically I could buy kia.ws, put up a website that looks similar to kia.com and see how much money I can make from advertising.
Finally, .ws domains are fairly inexpensive. You can register a new name on GoDaddy for about $15 which is considerably cheap compared to other country domain names like .tv that cost $40 per year.
Reasons To Stay Away From .ws
Obviously, the first reason you should stay away from registering a .ws domain (especially if you want to create a serious business or blog) is Google’s purposeful bias. In the United States, .com, .org, .net, .info (somewhat), and other popular domain extensions normally appear in Google results. If Google truly does try to display .co websites in the Republic of Columbia and .co.uk sites in the United Kingdom, then it wouldn’t make sense for them to show up for a United States user unless it contained super relevant content.
Another reason to stay away from .ws domains is that people will often associate them with spam sites. It seems like the average user automatically thinks that any website without a .com, .org, .net, .gov, .edu, or .co.uk is spam. If you wouldn’t want to brand a karate dojo with GordonKarate.info, you wouldn’t want to use GordonKarate.ws either. It looks odd (especially for users who don’t know any extension beyond .com), it sounds odd to say (dot-w-s), and if you put your advertisement on a billboard, people would have a hard time associating the GordonKarate.ws address with a website.
I agree to some of the opinions above to certain extent, however with regard to seo or how much weight big G would prefer to that particular domain extension still depends on numbers of factors (ie: onpage-offpage seo, backlinking, contents…). You still get site with .info and .ws ranked well as long as you know what you are doing.
Moreover, if people think these extension sites tend to be a “scam”, “odd” site that thought would be changed over time if the content you provide on your site and does brings value to visitors/readers, that’s in my opinion anyway.
One more thing though, If we all know .ws site can be used globally so does big G. Big G is smart enough to know whether that particualar .ws site talks about things related to specifically to its region (Western Samoa) or talks about general concept in which benefits to all every one in every corner on this planet. For instance, health and fitness niche…
I agree. Same thing with like .asia. I’ve never seen a .asia domain show up in my United States searches, but I bet you can if you tried.
About the ranking factor I’m not sure what will happen. In webmaster tools there is an option to set the target country, so for SEO purpose it might work, but I have no time to try it out…
If you are just using it for an affiliate site I don’t think people will care about it, but if you want to sell directly from this page I agree it might look cheap.
This is true about the Google Webmaster tools…
What you say about looking cheap is true, but the .ws domains cost $15 a year and .coms are $12 (GoDaddy pricing). I know that .ws is more expensive, but the average user does consider it spammy.
Interesting. To be honest I didn’t know there existed something like ‘.ws’. Good that you wrote about it 🙂
Even if it didn’t make much impact on the search pages as you pointed out, I might be willing to get .ws domains just because I don’t some other person to grab the ‘.ws’ versions of the brands I represent. That would be a disaster for the brands reputation!
Thanks again for the eyeopener 🙂
I was honestly thinking about snagging something like pets.ws to make a killer niche site, but I decided not to. Not too sure about .ws yet.
Hi Ian,
Great and rather interesting points you have stated here about .ws. I agree on your last paragraph actually, as I myself usually will think that .ws is an odd domain and will definitely dismiss it as a spam site. Thanks for sharing!
P.S.: I surely would like to know how your dofollow.ws would turn out in the future. Do tell us about it okay? Wishing you the best!
I will keep everyone on the blog updated about dofollow.ws. Feel free to add your sites to it! I am not charging for submissions yet.
I wouldn’t think that Google would see it differently, but what do I know anyway? I am interested in the “.ly” extensions. I think they are from Syria though.
It’s not that Google sees them differently, but it’s their way of giving you accurate results. Do the example I stated in this post. Go to Google.com and type in “web hosting” to see what comes up. Then perform the same search on Google.co.uk, Google.ca, and other foreign versions.
Hi Ian,
Personally, I never registered a .ws domain before. I have visited quite a few sites with this extension. I didn’t know Google sees it differently. Well, I may be thinking of it sometimes in the future but for now, I’m still going with the more popular extensions
I recently bought the domain dofollow.ws and I am in the process of creating a dofollow blog directory on it. I have never bought anything but .com domains, so this is entirely new for me. I hope since the keyword “dofollow” is so valuable, the .ws won’t matter and I will have success.