Hi I realized quite a lot expert have been using this forum, therefore I am asking you to suggest what domain name I should buy for my German domain site. The name contains "ö" letter ..... should I buy with letter O instead of letter ö....does it going to effect my search engine ranking with the O instead of the "ö" example .... könig.de is what I want to buy but i don't want to use diacritics in my domain..... should I buy konig.de ???? will my domain come up with the same result ??? I know some forums are suggesting me "oe" instead of "ö" letter but that domain has unfortunately been taken Anyone could help me with this I would really appreciate ! Henry
If your target audience is just German people in Germany, I think you'd be safe with the IDN name with diacritics. If you expect to have a foreign audience, including non-german speakers, you might want to avoid the diacritics. Personally, I would have no idea how to input a ö on my keyboard (other than copy and pasting it!). Checking the Google Keyword tool - there are about 3 times more people who type konig without the diacritics than with the diacritic. Also, another point to keep in mind, is that the Google search results for "konig" and "könig" ARE different. The results are similar (both include Wikipedia articles, and both list the top result as www.konigwheels.com ) - but they are not exactly the same. I think it's fair to say that if you use the "könig" version, you'll have a slight advantage for people searching using that term. That might make a difference if you're expecting to get a large portion of your visitors from search traffic for your main keyword.
Why don't you buy the IDN name exactly as is? Or has it been taken already? Also, since it's German & you wanna buy it as ASCII, don't you need to change the name from "ö" to "oe"?