Picking domain names - international

[Rich]

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Ok, here's an outline of the position I'm in:-
One of my sites (www.book-worm.info) has out grown its current host. Having had a look round, US prices seem so much better, so I'm considering moving it there.

Therefore, I really need to find a .co.uk domain for it so as it stays in the UK part of google.co.uk. Also, I'm hoping to create similar sites for other countries; US, then Germany, then Japan (that'll be fun!), then possibly Canada and France (if Amazon launch webservices for those sites), then any other regions; so I'm looking for a domain name that I can register in all these areas. (.com, .co.uk, .de, .jp & .ca).

A few people know the Book-Worm name now, but I'm not worried about completely changing the name. That site will still be there to direct people to other sites.

As far as I see it, my options are: -

• Pick a English descriptive title and register that in each country.
• Pick a English descriptive title and register it's translation in each country.
• Create a new word and register it in each country and hope its pronounceable and doesn't sound like anything rude.

Which would you go for? Any ideas on domains?

Thanks for any feedback, I'm going round in circles on this one

[Frostie]

Rich if it were me, I would buy book-info.whatever and also the correct dialect version of it too.

Could you not use the .info as a landing page, that would find which country you were coming from, and either automatically pass them to their country's version, or give them a choice of select which version they want to load up.

As for the registering of names http://www.names.co.uk do most of the ext you are after.

[John]

Originally posted by Frostie
As for the registering of names http://www.names.co.uk do most of the ext you are after.

Good recommendation Frostie - I've just picked up a very nice .au.com domain

[qwerky]

The normal Australian domain names are .com.au

The .au.com names are 2nd level .com domains not sure how well they'd get indexed if targetting an Australian market.

Try http://www.netregistry.com.au/ for Oz domains and the Australian dollar = approx 2.4 to £1 they look a lot cheaper than names.co.uk

[talk4]

As long as you are an an Australian registered company, or business for .com.au of course

[qwerky]

I just got shopping.au.com for $33 AUD and a few other one word domains.

I thought i'd retired from domain name buying, time to think of some Australian websites now!

[richardc]

qwerky, I think that there was a problem with the .au.com whois yesterday as names.co.uk showed me that shopping.au.com was registered and they took £150 off me to apparently register it.

However today I notice that the whois is working again and that shopping.au.com was registered on 3 March 2000 (see below):


[ AU.COM WhoIs server provided by NetRegistry Pty Ltd ]

Domain Information
name: shopping
domain: au.com
rname: Favourites Limited
raddress1: 4 fedw wood
rcity: chepstow
rstate: mon
rpost: np16 5tw
rcountry: gb
rphone: +44.7766225201
cauth: NETR1
cadmin: NETR1
ctech: NETR1
cbill: NETR1
created: 2004-04-10
modified: 2004-04-10
financial: 2009-04-10
ns1: ns25.schlund.de
ns1ip: ns26.schlund.de
ns2: ns26.schlund.de
Account Record
aid: NETR1
type: role
name: NetRegistry Domain Admin
address1: 97 Rose St
city: Chippendale
state: NSW
post: 2008
country: Australia
prephone: 02
phone: 96996099
email: dmain@netregistry.com.au
created: 2000-03-03
modified: 2000-06-13

[qwerky]

Favourites Limited is me, i registered it for 5 years from yesterday so hopefully its worked.

I am now trying to change the name servers to point it to my server for hosting, not sure it will work though with .au.com domains? name servers are ns25.schlund.de and 26


I guess you will get your money back as your registration failed?

[richardc]

qwerky - well done that's great. It just looks like the .au.com registry have a problem with their dates on the whois records.

I am sure names.co.uk will give me a refund.