looking at 5 new languages for the future

[sbe18]

Can anyone comment on:

Vietnamese IDN's and Vietnamese ASCII domains.
also Vietnamese 2,3,4 word domains that are heavily searched...
please comment on use of hyphens.
It seems that Vietnam based URL's use hyphens quite a bit.

Second:

Anyone have comments on their ownership of Turkish domains .

Third:
Anyone have comments on Urdu for Pakistan or the Muslim population of India ??

I think the Arabic / Urdu variants issue is still out there for certain characters and accents

Fourth:

Is anyone buying a few premium terms in Bengali or the other scripts for India ?
A friend of mine showed me his Android phone, and the quickness he can shift between 3 script keyboards that he uses for Gmail and texting.


Fifth:

Anyone looking at Farsi for Iran, now that the sanctions regime has lifted ??

All of these languages are reaching 50% or higher smartphone/mobile Internet penetration.
And they all are 80% or higher texting or messaging in native accented language and scripts at this point.

thanks

s/

[squirrel]

My advice would be follow the money.
I use to own a bit of vietnamese and bengali/bangla. Ater a few years of ownership and research, I realized the timing was off, a decade off maybe more. If you get a good one and develop it, i.e. football in vietnamese, you could do good. But just parking/reselling, not too sure.

[Jay]

Originally Posted by sbe18

Can anyone comment on:

Vietnamese IDN's and Vietnamese ASCII domains.
also Vietnamese 2,3,4 word domains that are heavily searched...
please comment on use of hyphens.
It seems that Vietnam based URL's use hyphens quite a bit.

Vietnamese are not a good market for IDN. Vietnamese don't generally type online using accented characters, much like the French from whom they derived their alphabet. ASCII is the way to go with Vietnamese - that's what the natives register and buy.

With regards to hyphens, most of the top Vietnamese sites don't use them in their URL (https://www.similarweb.com/country/vietnam). I would guess they are a poor secondary choice, much as they are in English.

Second:

Anyone have comments on their ownership of Turkish domains .

I don't think Ç and Ş have an ASCII equivalent, so Turks tend to type these letters in IDN. I expect the big terms have high traffic but low PPC. I like Turkish domains, but I only have a couple left (just middle-tier names). I think PPC will grow as the online economy grows. A good long-term prospect IMO. There is a native market for Turk IDNs.

Third:
Anyone have comments on Urdu for Pakistan or the Muslim population of India ??

Note that many Muslims in India use native languages (e.g., Bengali by Muslims in the east), so it is not really based on religious affiliation. I once owned several prime terms in Urdu, but dropped them for lack of traffic. That was a few years ago though. I would focus on Persian (Farsi) before Urdu. That said, might be worth grabbing any remaining prime terms in Urdu as a long-term bet.

Fourth:

Is anyone buying a few premium terms in Bengali or the other scripts for India?

Yes. I was just looking up stats for Bengali names yesterday: e.g., খবর (news) 22,200 exact search. With 250 million native speakers, that is a big potential growth market. Tamil is the other language that I think is worth looking at.

Fifth:

Anyone looking at Farsi for Iran, now that the sanctions regime has lifted ??

Iran is a sleeping giant - population is educated, ready to embrace the 21st century. I have a couple of Farsi names. I sold one six months ago for $x,xxx, so there are buyers sniffing around for them (foreign buyers at least). The question mark is when, if ever, Farsi will get its own matching .com script?

[Jay]

Originally Posted by squirrel

My advice would be follow the money.
I use to own a bit of vietnamese and bengali/bangla. Ater a few years of ownership and research, I realized the timing was off, a decade off maybe more. If you get a good one and develop it, i.e. football in vietnamese, you could do good. But just parking/reselling, not too sure.

Yeah long-term prospects for sure.

[mxfusion]

Originally Posted by Jay

Iran is a sleeping giant - population is educated, ready to embrace the 21st century. I have a couple of Farsi names. I sold one six months ago for $x,xxx, so there are buyers sniffing around for them (foreign buyers at least). The question mark is when, if ever, Farsi will get its own matching .com script?

Interesting to see Farsi being able to sell for that amount. Is it an end user sale or to one of us?

[Jay]

Originally Posted by mxfusion

Interesting to see Farsi being able to sell for that amount. Is it an end user sale or to one of us?

They were very specific in their niche. I assume they were developers, but I don't know for sure. No one from this forum.

[sbe18]

Thanks for the posts.
after the culling for my Japanese IDN's at 12.99 .......

I think I will dip the toes for one Turkish, Viet, Farsi, Bengali, and Urdu this year.
I might try to go with a matching Viet iDN with a Viet ascii.
Weirdly, I just think having for branding would be appropriate even if the ascii is a 100X traffic or PPC potential candidate..(one can dream....