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domains The Perils of an .xyz Domain

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What if I told you there was a way to instantly increase your email deliverability, website accessibility, the number of social media posts, and the customer perception of your brand? We just did exactly that by switching our primary domain from spot.xyz to spotvirtual.com.

Initially, the allure of a four-letter domain was strong. The .xyz extension was also fitting–Spot being a 3d virtual workplace in the browser–as it pertains to the multi-dimensional nature of our product. Moreover, surely choosing the same top-level domain as Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has been using for years is a relatively safe choice for our application? Unsurprisingly, this turns out to not be the case.

Not all top-level domains (TLDs) are created equal and some are much worse than others. We suspected as much, but we didn’t know how to quantify the risk when we were making this decision. In this post we lay out the impacts that having a .xyz was having on our business and hope to simplify the decision for other companies in the future.

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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
What if I told you there was a way to instantly increase your email deliverability, website accessibility, the number of social media posts, and the customer perception of your brand? We just did exactly that by switching our primary domain from spot.xyz to spotvirtual.com.

Initially, the allure of a four-letter domain was strong. The .xyz extension was also fitting–Spot being a 3d virtual workplace in the browser–as it pertains to the multi-dimensional nature of our product. Moreover, surely choosing the same top-level domain as Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has been using for years is a relatively safe choice for our application? Unsurprisingly, this turns out to not be the case.

Not all top-level domains (TLDs) are created equal and some are much worse than others. We suspected as much, but we didn’t know how to quantify the risk when we were making this decision. In this post we lay out the impacts that having a .xyz was having on our business and hope to simplify the decision for other companies in the future.

read more
Interesting article.

It reaches some of the same conclusions that Overstock seemed to find with their O.co debacle.

When you are using lesser known extensions that can cause potential friction is one way or another. Maybe that will change over a long enough time period with the general public.

Once we switched over to spotvirtual.com, not only did the anecdotal experience drastically improve, but we were able to quantify this based on some of our emails which were tracked. After switching, our initial email open rates rose from 70% to 86%, second email open rates rose from 50% to 72%, and overall meeting conversions rose from .1% to 3%! This improvement alone is worth the domain switch.


User Perception

After conducting business under spot.xyz we got the distinct impression that it was negatively impacting our brand. Although internally we did not share this same feeling, we would occasionally get feedback from users and prospects that the .xyz domain felt unprofessional and that they would prefer to use an app with a different URL. This was surprising feedback, as we did not believe that, beyond the initial discoverability of our product, the domain itself would create this type of impact.

It turns out, sites using the .xyz domain that are malicious are common enough that many users have formed a direct association. Not only that, but this is true for webmasters and site administrators as well as we describe below.

Firewalls

This is a straightforward downside to using a .xyz domain. Some organizations have the entire top-level .xyz domain blacklisted, disallowing all of their user base from accessing websites with that extension. When Googling about, it is common to come across webmasters who are seeking advice on how to block the entire domain. Even if your application is strictly obeying the best edicate possible, simply being associated with a .xyz domain is enough to become entirely inaccessible to a subset of traffic.
 
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They still got spot.xyz in their footer copyright 🤦‍♂️
 
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As much as I love xyz, when I try to access an xyz site on my work’s VPN, I get an error saying something like “This domain is blocked by our spam filter.” It’s like that for all xyz domains. Definitely something for the xyz registry to help fix to see xyz growth with businesses.
 
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As much as I love xyz, when I try to access an xyz site on my work’s VPN, I get an error saying something like “This domain is blocked by our spam filter.” It’s like that for all xyz domains. Definitely something for the xyz registry to help fix to see xyz growth with businesses.
I am not surprised.

I know some server admins who block it as well.

I think .XYZ ran into major spam issues, especially when they were offering unlimited penny registrations. It was just a favorite extension of spammers and scammers because of that.

I am not sure about the current spam status, but years later it seems like they are still trying to fight that perception. There could be another thread called "The perils of low cost domain registrations"...

Brad
 
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Every couple of years an extension like .xyz comes along that is nice and shiny and all the rave.... any one else remembers .mobi and all the company debacles surrounding that.... then .co because it was shorter than .com all succumbing to the fact that .com is engrained into the psyche of the public whole as the de facto extension for the internet and trust on the internet .... etc etc etc ?

I'm happy for everyone making money on that extension... but that too shall past.

Building a global brand on anything other than .com is risky business... great short term play... but not a viable solution .xyz

just my two cents.
 
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Every couple of years an extension like .xyz comes along that is nice and shiny and all the rave.... any one else remembers .mobi and all the company debacles surrounding that.... then .co because it was shorter than .com all succumbing to the fact that .com is engrained into the psyche of the public whole as the de facto extension for the internet and trust on the internet .... etc etc etc ?

I'm happy for everyone making money on that extension... but that too shall past.

Building a global brand on anything other than .com is risky business... great short term play... but not a viable solution .xyz

just my two cents.
Sorry but this time is different, even I was new to domaining I could see .biz .mobi even .web will succumb to .com, .xyz will engrained into the psyche of the new generation, the reason is simple, .com .mobi .net .biz are look so OLD.
 
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Sorry but this time is different, even I was new to domaining I could see .biz .mobi even .web will succumb to .com, .xyz will engrained into the psyche of the new generation, the reason is simple, .com .mobi .net .biz are look so OLD.

"This time will be different" is ALWAYS the argument. It was the same with .mobi when cellphones became more prolific. Giants of industries were backing this movement for a time until it faded into nothing when they realized it didn't solve any real problem but only create more problems.

Look I'm not here to debate, I hope a lot of domainers make a lot of money with .xyz.

Periodically this whole thing repeats itself. Just don't be the last one holding the bag or trying to get in the race late like the so called Chinese premium 4 letter domains. Yes one is an extension and the other is a sub-niche, but the idea is the same and the bell curve it will follow is the same.

Make your money in .xyz and divest to premium .coms.


Anyways, best wishes. I'm not going to follow this thread.
 
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I am not sure about the current spam status, but years later it seems like they are still trying to fight that perception. There could be another thread called "The perils of low cost domain registrations"...
Yeah, I think this is the real problem. It was a throw away domain in the past because the registry was trying to increase usage by super low intro pricing. The only ones I registered were for temporary projects because they were one of the few domains that were $1 for a year.
 
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"This time will be different" is ALWAYS the argument. It was the same with .mobi when cellphones became more prolific. Giants of industries were backing this movement for a time until it faded into nothing when they realized it didn't solve any real problem but only create more problems.
I really get your point, but when you change a device from computer to cellphone it doesn't really change the natural image of the website itself, even you move your website from mobile to VR devices it changes nothing for people's perspective of views of what a domain extension stands for, the history only tell us it's always been a soft value and that has nothing to do with your hardware, it's the same reason .app won't be so popular as .xyz as it's value always based on domain's image itself, now web3 startups are choosing .xyz because it relates to ETH, Blockchain, Metaverse etc. that's so much different between the case .mobi and .com.
 
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I really get your point, but when you change a device from computer to cellphone it doesn't really change the natural image of the website itself, even you move your website from mobile to VR devices it changes nothing for people's perspective of views of what a domain extension stands for, the history only tell us it's always been a soft value and that has nothing to do with your hardware, it's the same reason .app won't be so popular as .xyz as it's value always based on domain's image itself, now web3 startups are choosing .xyz because it relates to ETH, Blockchain, Metaverse etc. that's so much different between the case .mobi and .com.
The point trying to be made by others is yes they are choosing it somewhat for now. It can merely be a rebellious fad, passing fancy and sales can and do decline.

You are projecting your wishes about an unknown future of the usage of xyz. What about ens and handshake and all the other extensions? Those aren’t “old“ and they are more in line with crypto pursuits.

Truth is nobody knows what will happen with any of the extensions long term. We do know com has remained the king for 30 years now. Its a safer bet, it has built in credibility.

That being said, single popular dictionary words in most extensions have value. No different for xyz.

Thinking com looks “old” is silliness. 21 year olds think 30 year olds are old as hell… till they get there. 😂
 
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You are projecting your wishes about an unknown future of the usage of xyz. What about ens and handshake and all the other extensions? Those aren’t “old“ and they are more in line with crypto pursuits.
I've been thinking about handshack and .eth .sol .tez. crypto for months already, it won't much effect the popularity of .xyz because the only use way for the blockchain domain name is to direct a wallet and web address, it's merely about the decentralized web construction itself, and for me .eth .crypto are playing a role as a decentralized extension but Handshake is more like decentralized ICANN which it looks like when you've created an extension you need to promote them for yourself which means the cohesion of the value is very limited, when I invested .xyz I was pretty certain it will be successful eventually compared to so many other new extensions, I see blockchain domain will indeed be worth a lot but the reason I don't invest many of them because there are so many chains are so good based on its algorithm not only ETH but also Solana, Zilla, ada, bsv etc. because they are all under the technology field so eventually there will be only few win out the competition in the end, who are famous now doesn't mean they won't be surpassed as only less than 5% population are involved in this area, now the situation is vague, before that I won't take the risk on blockchain domain names.
 
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The point trying to be made by others is yes they are choosing it somewhat for now. It can merely be a rebellious fad, passing fancy and sales can and do decline.

You are projecting your wishes about an unknown future of the usage of xyz. What about ens and handshake and all the other extensions? Those aren’t “old“ and they are more in line with crypto pursuits.

Truth is nobody knows what will happen with any of the extensions long term. We do know com has remained the king for 30 years now. Its a safer bet, it has built in credibility.

That being said, single popular dictionary words in most extensions have value. No different for xyz.

Thinking com looks “old” is silliness. 21 year olds think 30 year olds are old as hell… till they get there. 😂
Probably the best post i've read about this whole xyz drama..
 
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That being said, single popular dictionary words in most extensions have value. No different for xyz.

Thinking com looks “old” is silliness. 21 year olds think 30 year olds are old as hell… till they get there.
Untrue, .xyz has overpassed the sales records than any other domain extension aside from .com, a single word in .ninja .win worth no value, 30 years old's thought can be new but look can't.
 
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Untrue, .xyz has overpassed the sales records than any other domain extension aside from .com, a single word in .ninja .win worth no value, 30 years old's thought can be new but look can't.
Sorry but this time is different, even I was new to domaining I could see .biz .mobi even .web will succumb to .com, .xyz will engrained into the psyche of the new generation, the reason is simple, .com .mobi .net .biz are look so OLD.

So because something is "old" which is more widely recognized, used, trusted, valuable....it is worse? That is some weird logic.

It is basically a non sequitur or deductive fallacy where the underlying arguments don't support the conclusion.

Brad
 
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I have a feeling all the usage of xyz names in the web3, crypto etc space is only going to make things worse with regards to its spam score/perception which can only compound the difficulties in using them.
 
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spammers use .xyz domains to spam, so it might be the reason to get the entire .xyz extension on spam
 
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my vpn blocks xyz and any other dot whatever except dot com

dot com is king and dot whatever are for spammers
 
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Wow! This article is really damning for .xyz

Wait until it is picked up by well known news outlets and that could be the end of any premium sales for the extension.
 
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A company recently purchased wp.xyz Seems like the .xyz domain is gaining attention & traction.
 
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