Geography domains are turning out to be a hot and extremely challenging topic. The local search and the local appeal have been gaining popularity because of their huge potential for further development.

It was not long ago when municipal governments asserted that they were entitled to own a domain name with the name of the city, or even country. The courts did not buy their arguments and this resulted in the stampede for geo domains.

There are two factors selling geo domains: the popularity of the geographic location and The Population.

Geo domains sell because they are perfect for development and for bloggers to use them as tourist guide domains and directories. Geo domains can be used to sell anything local – hotel bookings, car rentals, restaurants, city tours, theatre you name it.

I have lived here in London for many years and have been to many of the top nightclubs, best restaurants and theatres. Yet, despite my very intimate knowledge of London, I still use geo websites such as londontown.com to plan the perfect night out.

LondonTown.com has been around for a long time (before the geo domains craze) and, at the time of writing, had an Alexa ranking of 18,531. This is to show that the geo domain/website concept is not really new, is extremely popular, useful and potentially financially rewarding.

For domainers who believe that they have to actually have the actual city dot com (such as London.com), here is proof that you don’t really have to:

At the time of writing, London.com is been redirected to LondonTown.com. The domain name London.com has an Alexa ranking of 3,325,522, compared to LondonTown.com’s 18,531.

The verdict: the city plus a suitable vertical dot com, such as London + Town dot com, will equate to profits when developed into dynamic and useful websites.

Geo domains are advertising gems, since they are natural traffic pullers… well sort of.