.ie domains-are they worth it?

trickobrien

I have never registered this extension before- the little ive learned about the registration process has put me off for life.

Anyone got any thoughts on this

Are you not a genuine business ?

That's the only reason I can see it being that big an issue.

It depends on your business and your target market. If you're Irish, targetting Irish people then it's a sensible thing to go for.

J_Wholesale

If all of your business is inside Ireland, then yes, they are worth it. If you have even a small percentage of overseas business, or plan to in the future, then you're probably better of using the .com, and redirecting the .ie domain. You should aim to own both, however, regardless of which one you use, because some of your visitors will assume you are one or the other.

Andy_Black

Hi,

The .ie just helps to tell people that it is an Irish site.

It's not necessary for the likes of:
www.dublinwashingmachinerepairs.com
www.kildarebmw.com
etc...

I've been knocking up sites for clients like the two above. They do what they say on the tin, so no need for the .ie

Cheaper, less hassle, and you're up and running in under an hour typically.

Cheers, Andy

mneylon

.ie domains can be more time consuming to register and cost more, but you will have more choices open to you. There are less than 200k IE domains registered, while there are millions of .com

Another option to consider would be .eu - you won't have as many options as in .ie, but you'll still have more than in .com

conolan

Not sure I'd agree about .eu, public not familiar with them.
.ie is better for businesses that want to trade in Ireland only, but a hassle.

MarysCross

I used to work for an SEO company and I know that it has some value from that side, apart from that it's worth it simply to prevent a rival from purchasing it and causing trouble for you!

Wats_in_a_name

If you are registered with the CRO registering a .ie is no effort at all.

Just type in your cro # and your sorted.

PHONiC.ie

It helps with google ranking within ireland, that should be enough for the little effort required..

AMPSound

Yeah and even more of a help on Bing - as its quite a pain to change the region on bing.

As far as I know, search engines automatically assume you are from Ireland with a .ie domain which is obviously good for SEO.

Wats_in_a_name

I thought seo based where the site is located on where the site is hosted. So if a site is hosted in Ireland they treat it as a Irish site.

AMPSound

Wats_in_a_name wrote: »

I thought seo based where the site is located on where the site is hosted. So if a site is hosted in Ireland they treat it as a Irish site.

I thought so too, but I have quite a few .ie sites hosted in the US, and Bing and Google picks them up as Irish.

The other side of that though is if you had a .com hosted in Ireland, I'm sure it would again pick it up as Irish.

Buttercake

trickobrien wrote: »

I have never registered this extension before- the little ive learned about the registration process has put me off for life.

Anyone got any thoughts on this

you can register the business name online, cro.ie or call into them on parnell street

takes 5mins to complete the form and they send you out the cert

looks more legit when you have .ie

mneylon

Buttercake wrote: »

you can register the business name online, cro.ie or call into them on parnell street

takes 5mins to complete the form and they send you out the cert

Yes - it's pretty fast and painless

Buttercake wrote: »

looks more legit when you have .ie

To whom?

I've seen the IEDR trying to push that idea for years, but does Joe Public know or care?

Buttercake

Blacknight wrote: »

Yes - it's pretty fast and painless


To whom?

I've seen the IEDR trying to push that idea for years, but does Joe Public know or care?

I think that Joe Public nowadays are savvy enough to know a .ie means its a registered business

people will know that www.joepublic.ie is more legit than www.joepublicireland.com

J_Wholesale

Buttercake wrote: »

I think that Joe Public nowadays are savvy enough to know a .ie means its a registered business

people will know that www.joepublic.ie is more legit than www.joepublicireland.com

Who about www.joepublic.ie and www.joepublic.com/ie/ ?

My take on these two is that the first will lead me to a holding page or a site that hasn't been updated in 2 years because the owner has yet to work out how to make the site pay in a market as small as Ireland, whereas the second immediately suggests a large, well established business, who sell to people in Ireland or have an Irish presence.

How many successful and growing Irish web sites sell physical products (as opposed to services) to customers only within Ireland? Very few. Most of the Irish eCommerce success stories are shipping goods to customers outside Ireland. We certainly are - 95% of our business is UK. In these cases, a .ie domain would be a major liability. A .com domain allows you to be international, a .ie is parochial - perfect for the school website or an Irish discussion forum like this.

Buttercake

J_Wholesale wrote: »

Who about www.joepublic.ie and www.joepublic.com/ie/ ?

My take on these two is that the first will lead me to a holding page or a site that hasn't been updated in 2 years because the owner has yet to work out how to make the site pay in a market as small as Ireland

Ok bit of a generalisation there, not every .ie website is or has to be an online store and not every .ie is a holding page

schools/churches in Ireland use .com's anyway

I would disagree that .ie is a "liability" in fact its the opposite, I will use the services of a plumber, driving instructor, online store, car, insurance or flower shop if they have .ie. It shows that they have at least registered their business name and there is some traceability that the domain was not registered by some kid who mocked up a phishing website and it looks better

People are more concerned with security etc and will favour a .ie address over a .com or a .com slash ie slash

then again it depends on what you are doing/selling etc if its local or global

J_Wholesale

Buttercake wrote: »

People are more concerned with security etc and will favour a .ie address over a .com or a .com slash ie slash

Sorry, but I just don't believe that.

I run 4 different Irish based websites, 3 of which are eCommerce sites, and 1 of which is a community based forum. All use the .com extension, all our successful, and I've never had a single question about not using a .ie. We own the .ie domains, but we never use them.

Buttercake

J_Wholesale wrote: »

Sorry, but I just don't believe that.

I run 4 different Irish based websites, 3 of which are eCommerce sites, and 1 of which is a community based forum. All use the .com extension, all our successful, and I've never had a single question about not using a .ie. We own the .ie domains, but we never use them.

fair enough,,

I design and consult irish service based websites (accountants, solicitors, sustainability companies etc) and always gone with .ie's

It's also to "secure" the domain for your business, i have had to deal with issues in the past where a client wanted a .com and we registered it, next day his rival went out and took the .ie and vice versa

mneylon

Buttercake wrote: »

I think that Joe Public nowadays are savvy enough to know a .ie means its a registered business

people will know that www.joepublic.ie is more legit than www.joepublicireland.com

Two things

1 - joepublic.ie could easily be a personal domain name
2 - IT / Web professionals know about the RBN / CRO side of it, but I would wonder if "normal" people know or care

I don't know of any actual studies being conducted by the IEDR or anyone else that has shown any real data on this

I'd agree with what a lot of other people have said on the topic

In the UK, for example, they have done studies on consumer views etc., and the co.uk ccTLD was seen as being trusted and was the extension of choice. Funnily enough though Nominet (co.uk registry) don't validate any co.uk registration, though they do validate ltd.uk (which you don't see much of)

Stephentlig

Forgive me if its been mentioned already, but...isnt it a fact that you can register both the .ie and the .com? thus having both? this would make it alot easier for anyone wondering which to choose as they would have the two.

Pax Christi
Stephen

mneylon

Stephentlig wrote: »

Forgive me if its been mentioned already, but...isnt it a fact that you can register both the .ie and the .com? thus having both? this would make it alot easier for anyone wondering which to choose as they would have the two.

It's what I'd recommend most people to do BUT you'll often find that you can get a better / stronger keyword rich domain in .ie (or .me) than you would in .com

envirogreen

Hi

I work for a northern irish company called envirogreen recycling and we provide recycling services to commercial customers throughout Ireland. We have a lot of customers in South, but we are looking to expand more, do ye all think that our .com

Is enough or do we need a .ie

See http://www.envirogreenrecycling.com

Opinions please

trickobrien

Well the general consensus is if youre doing business here,then use the .IE extension,but since your business is also outside the country,I think youre ok with the .com.Your site is PR3 and has some very relevant backlinks,I would say get some backlinks down here.Your site needs a little on page optomization done on it.Thats just my .02 cents worth.

mneylon

envirogreen wrote: »

Hi

I work for a northern irish company called envirogreen recycling and we provide recycling services to commercial customers throughout Ireland. We have a lot of customers in South, but we are looking to expand more, do ye all think that our .com

Is enough or do we need a .ie

See http://www.envirogreenrecycling.com

Opinions please

It wouldn't hurt to get the .ie and simply redirect it to the existing .com ..

envirogreen

trickobrien wrote: »

Well the general consensus is if youre doing business here,then use the .IE extension,but since your business is also outside the country,I think youre ok with the .com.Your site is PR3 and has some very relevant backlinks,I would say get some backlinks down here.Your site needs a little on page optomization done on it.Thats just my .02 cents worth.

Are there any good free irish business directories or websites that I could link too. Also, how did you find out how many link are linking to our website ?

Thanks
Conor

passivetony

If your trading in Ireland .ie is a must. The majority of people searching the web for an Irish site will stick .ie on the end, this is why they are more expensive.

mneylon

passivetony wrote: »

If your trading in Ireland .ie is a must. The majority of people searching the web for an Irish site will stick .ie on the end, this is why they are more expensive.

That is factually incorrect.

I don't dispute that Irish users will try the .ie, though I don't think anyone has ever done any proper market research on it. (Research has been done in a lot of other countries such as the UK)

But your linking of this to the cost of .ie domain registration is just plain wrong.

passivetony

This is what I bought last week. Maybe its not always the case.


1
.org Domain Subscription

3


year(s)


8.95


26.85

2
.biz Domain Subscription

3


year(s)


8.95


26.85

3
.info Domain Subscription

1


year(s)


8.95


8.95

4
.ie Promotional Price

1


item


89.85


89.85

5
.eu Promotional Price

1


item


29.85


29.85

mneylon

passivetony wrote: »

This is what I bought last week. Maybe its not always the case.

I've no idea who you are registering domains through, but you're paying way more than you need to.

Sonnenblumen

passivetony wrote: »

If your trading in Ireland .ie is a must. The majority of people searching the web for an Irish site will stick .ie on the end, this is why they are more expensive.

I dont agree that an Irish company must have a .ie but that's my opinion. If you're going to develop web sales surely a .ie would be potentially more limiting within an international market than a no.ie might be in Ireland?

What does puzzles me is why .ie addresses are much more expensive than other (.com, .org, .eu etc etc)?

From waht I've seen, if your site has good seo it matters little about .ie v .com ?

mneylon

Sonnenblumen wrote: »

What does puzzles me is why .ie addresses are much more expensive than other (.com, .org, .eu etc etc)?

The registry charges more to the resellers (registrars) and the process of registration is still quite manual compared to .com or .eu

For a .eu, for example, the only requirement is that the registrant have an address in one of the EU states.

So we could register a few thousand .eu domains per hour, while the manual aspect of .ie means that you'd only manage a few hundred per week..

Platform Web

Apart from SEO value, .ie is great because Ireland is one of the very few countries where domain names have some protection. As an internet marketer I recommend .ie if your a business or a sports/social club. Anything else is fine if its a more casual use. No harm to think of it as 'buying Irish'.

mneylon

Platform Web wrote: »

Apart from SEO value, .ie is great because Ireland is one of the very few countries where domain names have some protection.

What are you talking about exactly?

The .ie ccTLD has a dispute policy, but so do most country code domains.

Platform Web

Blacknight wrote: »

What are you talking about exactly?

Original question, are '.ie' domains worth it? Yes, I think they are worth it, particularly for a predominantly Irish trading business. Also, it is a good thing in my opinion that one has to evidence a case for a domain name via '.ie'. Not always the case in other countries for their respective Top Level Domains.

mneylon

Platform Web wrote: »

Original question, are '.ie' domains worth it? Yes, I think they are worth it, particularly for a predominantly Irish trading business. Also, it is a good thing in my opinion that one has to evidence a case for a domain name via '.ie'. Not always the case in other countries for their respective Top Level Domains.

Why?
You haven't actually provided any reasons why it's a good thing.

I can think of a multitude of reasons as to why it's a bad thing and that it actually damages both the namespace and online business in this country.

As for other ccTLDs - the *.uk namespace and .de namespace are both very strong and neither have "odd" and ambiguous / inconsistent registration policies

Buttercake

Blacknight wrote: »

Why?
You haven't actually provided any reasons why it's a good thing.

I can think of a multitude of reasons as to why it's a bad thing and that it actually damages both the namespace and online business in this country.

As for other ccTLDs - the *.uk namespace and .de namespace are both very strong and neither have "odd" and ambiguous / inconsistent registration policies

If you think there are no differences between .ie & other tlds, why did you register blacknight.ie?