Context and Cultural Applicability

[mwbseiso]

So I see people buying IDNs right and left. Are people here blindly buying translations of keywords that are really good in English, that happen to have good stats as well?

I personally feel that it is much more complicated than that, as one must incorporate and account for the relevance of a given keyword to a language or culture in which it is planned to be used. In other words, a word like PhysicalTherapy.com would be a great hit in English, but in Arabic or Russian it is not as interesting or valuable. I only speak for these two languages as they are the two languages that I speak and know natively (and even with this, I am sure some people would disagree with me).

Nonetheless, I just feel that some words, no matter how attractive they are in English, are absolutely irrelevant in a different language. How do people account for that if buying domains in a foreign language? Just word stats, OVT, Google Trends? Or do people try to consult with native speakers?

That's the main reason that I only have a couple of IDNs in languages I do not speak, while most of mine are Arabic / Russian.

The reason I ask, is that I have seen several posts in my limited time on this forum, that either use incorrect forms or spellings of keywords, or even correct words that sound absurd when translated.

Just poking everyone's brains for thoughts... :)

[Rubber Duck]

Get more complicated when one gets onto Word Combos as one inevitably does in new regging at this stage.

Most of my domains are single word. That greatly reduces the complexity. Usage can easily be gauge using stats such as Google Serp or Google Trends, or ads generated in Baidu or Yandex.

If you are a native speaker, then you can obviously mine deeper. I am not, so I have not been new regging for sometime but I believe I have been picking up excellent value in the after market or late.


So I see people buying IDNs right and left. Are people here blindly buying translations of keywords that are really good in English, that happen to have good stats as well?

I personally feel that it is much more complicated than that, as one must incorporate and account for the relevance of a given keyword to a language or culture in which it is planned to be used. In other words, a word like PhysicalTherapy.com would be a great hit in English, but in Arabic or Russian it is not as interesting or valuable. I only speak for these two languages as they are the two languages that I speak and know natively (and even with this, I am sure some people would disagree with me).

Nonetheless, I just feel that some words, no matter how attractive they are in English, are absolutely irrelevant in a different language. How do people account for that if buying domains in a foreign language? Just word stats, OVT, Google Trends? Or do people try to consult with native speakers?

That's the main reason that I only have a couple of IDNs in languages I do not speak, while most of mine are Arabic / Russian.

The reason I ask, is that I have seen several posts in my limited time on this forum, that either use incorrect forms or spellings of keywords, or even correct words that sound absurd when translated.

Just poking everyone's brains for thoughts... :)

[Olney]

Many actually just ask a speaker of the language if the buy is good or not by PM.
If there are not many speakers of a particular language it gets harder.
I think you are right though I would suggest buyers clearly know & see why a domain has high stats.

But by this time I'm sure members know how to double & triple check many of their buys.

[rhys]

If you see something that is clearly linguistically incorrect, you can present that opinion politely on the sales thread or via a PM to the seller. People don't like "pollution" on the sales thread but bad product is bad product IMO.

[yanni]

PhysicalTherapy.com would be a great hit in English, but in Arabic or Russian it is not as interesting or valuable. I only speak for these two languages as they are the two languages that I speak and know natively (and even with this, I am sure some people would disagree with me).


As the proud owner of Physical Therapy dot com in Russian, I'll have to disagree :)

Even though you may be correct in your determination that the term might not be as valuable in Russia as it is in the US, it nevertheless has some value based on the fact that there are a couple of advertisers on Yandex, that pay for cliks delivered by that keyword.

I figure some day they'll be paying me as well.

[mwbseiso]

As the proud owner of Physical Therapy dot com in Russian, I'll have to disagree :)
I knew that someone would have to disagree with me! :)

But seriously, I did not claim that the domain is "worthless" in Russian; absolutely not. Perhaps one day it would pick up, but I guess from a "cultural" standpoint, the concept of physical therapy is not as widely circulated in Russia as it is in the USA. In the US, everybody and their mother is doing some form of physical therapy. In Russia, you might find out that a friend of a friend of your uncle's wife was doing physical therapy sessions some time ago. You know what I mean? That said, I do agree with yanni that the domain definitely has value, but not the same value it would in the US culture.

Cheers!

[Rubber Duck]

I have to agree with Yanni. If people are paying for the keyword one day they will be queuing up to buy the domain. This is the metric I like best. If I am sure that the keyword is generating Ads then I will pay low $xx even if I haven't a clue what it means.

[jacksonm]

I have to agree with Yanni. If people are paying for the keyword one day they will be queuing up to buy the domain. This is the metric I like best. If I am sure that the keyword is generating Ads then I will pay low $xx even if I haven't a clue what it means.

This is possibly a dangerous strategy, because sometimes the ads are only generated by arbitrageurs to fill all possible ad space regardless of what you search for.

Example of one ad which was commonly run on arbitrage campaigns:

"Live and Dead Popes"

Even though Google has clamped down on arbitrage to MFAs, there will still be people who will try it every month before they get banned. And google will likely have a difficult time watching this in languages other than english.

.

[Rubber Duck]

I would have to qualify that by saying that I would be looking for Ads from a variety of sources that were not obviously mini-sites. I would normally be talking 8 Ads not just a couple. Such domains have been going begging here, and continue to do so!

[touchring]

Even though Google has clamped down on arbitrage to MFAs, there will still be people who will try it every month before they get banned. And google will likely have a difficult time watching this in languages other than english.

.


Google's algo is language independent.

[Rubber Duck]

I might add, it can also be extremely enlightening to follow who is bidding for what.

If you see native speakers or others competent in the language bidding seriously, it can often flag up seriously commercial terms.

I let you work out who the key players are.

[mwbseiso]

A lot of interesting and valuable (at least to me) thoughts... Thanks everyone for sharing!

[blastfromthepast]

I have to agree with Yanni. If people are paying for the keyword one day they will be queuing up to buy the domain. This is the metric I like best. If I am sure that the keyword is generating Ads then I will pay low $xx even if I haven't a clue what it means.

Correct. There are enough statistics out there, that if you have good IDN skills, you can use purely technical analysis of what is good and what is not good. RD has been doing this for several years now, and I would say that this is an aquired skill, just like a good stock trader will run certain analysis to get stats, you can do a lot with keyword analysis with any language and figure it out. The more you do this, the more you learn about how certain language are constructed, and that helps you even more.