A study by MetroMonitor looked at several growth indicators such as employment, home prices, and foreclosure rates. The researchers ranked and listed the Top 21 cities that produced the best statistical figures.

The ultimate standout was the booming Dallas-Fort Worth metro area that added more residents in the past decade than any other city. Fueling the growth there is a very positive business climate in which there is no corporate income tax and regulations are minimal.

The state of Texas was very well represented with 6 cities making the Top 21 list. The highest ranking cities meeting the recession-proof criteria were (in alphabetical order):

Albany, NY
Augusta, GA
Austin, TX
Baton Rouge, LA
Buffalo, NY
Columbia, SC
Dallas, TX
Des Moines, IA
El Paso, TX
Honolulu, HI
Houston, TX
Jackson, MS
Little Rock, AR
Madison, WI
McAllen, TX
Oklahoma City, OK
Omaha, NE
Rochester, NY
San Antonio, TX
Tulsa, OK
Washington, D.C.

The MetroMonitor study includes a wealth of information on various cities’ standings along a number of economic indicators.

Premium domain names of interest related to the above cities include:

• AugustaGeorgia.US
• AustinRealEstate.biz
• Columbia.info
• DallasTexas.biz
• ElPaso.biz
• HonoluluHawaii.biz
• HoustonAttorneys.US
• LittleRockRealEstate.info
• OklahomaCity.biz
• OmahaNebraska.US
• SanAntonioRealEstate.info
• TulsaHotels.info
• WashingtonDCRealEstate.info

Boulevard’s portfolio of city domains is simply stunning, and the collective value almost priceless. Examples of their properties …

Following some years later came the official releases of .info (information), .biz (business), and .US (United States) domain name extensions. The competition was global and intense for city domain names in these addresses. Many individuals and companies had “seen the light”, and recognized the incredible opportunity before them.

A parallel story which was unfolding alongside the domain name evolution was the unraveling of traditional newspapers and print media. Many newspapers did not understand that their own demise was at hand. In short, their print advertising plummeted. Moreover, newspapers failed to grab the brass ring … which was to acquire a pure city domain name and to adequately position themselves for the internet future.

There were exceptions, however. The Charlotte Observer obtained Charlotte.com, The Boston Globe acquired Boston.com, and the former Knight Ridder Publishing (who owned the Miami Herald) captured Miami.com. All good moves.

Further illustrating the current emergency underway with print newspapers in America is the recent bankruptcy declaration of the Denver Post. They are the 13th newspaper bankruptcy filing by a U.S. newspaper publisher in only 13 months. Read about it here.

Menius Enterprises worked diligently beginning in year 2001 to acquire a number of high value geo domain properties, including: Charlotte.US, Detroit.US, Portland.US, California.biz, Miami.biz, NewOrleans.biz, NorthCarolina.info, Indiana.info, and Sacramento.info. Since then, we have sold a number of pure geo domain names and geo-targeted domains.

Morris Communications (based in Augusta, Georgia) obtained cities such as Nashville.biz, Cleveland.biz, and StLouis.biz.

City domain names are rare and have few substitutes. They appeal to a large clientele yielding relevance for local residents, both local and global businesses, and international travelers to the area. Cities have their own unique personality. And a timeless, enduring quality.

In building Charlotte.US from the ground up, I reviewed both the positive and negative aspects of a number of other geo sites. I also considered the platform on which to build Charlotte.US such as “static html” files vs. WordPress.

Content can be modified much more easily than can site structure. Structure is something which you will be married to and which cannot be easily converted. For this project, WordPress was selected due to its many automated features, plug-ins, publishing options, and excellent universal compatibility.

Actually, I had been looking for a geo portal template for some time that would allow me to add and subtract content components. Eventually, I found a news oriented portal, built on WordPress, that I could heavily edit. The current version, now viewable at Charlotte.US, has been dramatically modified from the original template.

The site is in what I consider a workable early form right now. There are a variety of auto-updating feeds & content such that revisiting the site numerous times per day will provide the user with new material. This concept I hope to take to an even higher level over time. I have had good success obtaining permissions where required, and I plan to develop partnerships with local businesses as time permits. Local advertising revenue will be pursued though no hurry on this at the moment.

Future upgrades will aim to customize the content sections especially in the real estate, apartments, entertainment, and online services area. Currently, these are linked to local service providers via Superpages content. The Ticketmaster section is fairly well done as is.

Interested readers may also like to follow Detroit.US which is being modeled after the Charlotte site.

Buffett states that newspapers run the risk of “unending losses“. That’s a pretty powerful statement. This collapse of the American newspaper industry is an odd development. Local geo domain portals are most likely going to take news in a new direction as traditional newspapers die off. Buffett also said …

For most newspapers in the United States, we would not buy them at any price.

I am not aware of the status of newspapers in areas outside the U.S., but my suspicion is that this decline is not confined to only the USA. Probably a global occurrence tied to internet proliferation in every country.

I took my family to Wilmington last weekend and we went to several newly released movies. Ironically, both movies had prominent scenes addressing the rapid decline of hardcopy newspapers in America. Check out State of Play (Russell Crowe & Ben Affleck) and The Soloist (Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey, Jr). You’ll see what I mean. It’s obviously a hot topic in Hollywood.

Sprint Nextel Corporation have their world headquarters based in Kansas City. Other major companies operating out of Kansas City include Applebee’s, Hallmark Cards, H&R Block, Russell Stover Candies, Bayer, and many others.

Andrew’s Kansas City geodomain is in the official United States web address, dotUS. He recently developed a minisite for Kansas City which contains information on travel, sports, attractions, shopping, and real estate. Minisites are scaled down versions of a full featured website, and they present an affordable first step for getting an undeveloped domain name up and running.

Andrew selected a minisite developer, Minisites.com, after having perused the field of web development companies working in this area. He writes about KansasCity.US and minisite development in his blog piece entitled, “Minisites.com Delivers: KansasCity.us“.

The .com version of this domain name is owned by McClatchy Interactive who are the third largest newspaper publisher in America. McClatchy, among others, have been struggling with declining newspaper revenues as a result of internet users choosing to go online for their news & information.

No doubt, geodomain websites and domain names are the future of media. So Andrew’s acquisition of KansasCity.US represents a Class A business decision. ccTLD’s are gaining increasing global recognition. And nothing is more impressive than having a huge metropolitan city or exotic travel destination.

Readers will be interested to know that Andrew is also the owner of SanFrancisco.US. Well known domain investor Rick Schwartz purchased Nashville.US in recent years, and Miami.US was auctioned off earlier this year via online domain broker, Sedo.com. This writer is the owner of Charlotte.US, the largest city in North Carolina (currently my home state).

I am an avid geodomain enthusiast and investor. For those of you who are examining geodomain investment opportunities, you may find yourself a bit puzzled as to the most appropriate choice when it comes to “city abbreviations”.

Which is best? StLouis or SaintLouis, FortWorth or FtWorth, FtLauderdale or FortLauderdale? This is where the internet really shines and can provide good information on which to base a decision. For a variety of reasons, some cities gravitate to the common abbreviation while others opt for the full name (non-abbreviated). Before moving forward, let us agree that both versions (abbreviated & non-abbreviated) will generate traffic and user recognition.

Using our friend, Google, let’s compare the number of indexed web pages to find our answer.

• St Louis (101,000,000), Saint Louis (27,500,000)
• Fort Worth (52,700,000), Ft Worth (5,630,000)
• Fort Collins (12,300,000), Ft Collins (984,000)
• Fort Lauderdale (27,500,000), Ft Lauderdale (10,700,000)
• St Paul (45,400,000), Saint Paul (19,700,000)

Both varieties in the above examples produced ample web pages with “St” and “Fort” seeming to be most in use. I remember being somewhat indoctrinated to “St. Louis” while growing up due to seeing lots of TV ads for products that would be ordered out of St. Louis, Missouri.

So “St” became quite familiar particularly in reference to the St. Louis Cardinals (StLouisCardinals.com) and eventually the St Louis Rams (StLouisRams.com). My conclusion is that this same logic holds true as well for geo-targeted domains like StLouisJobs.biz or StLouisRealEstate.com.

PremiumDomains.biz just featured Mr. Haddedou and his prime geodomain portfolio which includes SanDiego.biz, Tulsa.us, and PebbleBeach.us. Omar will now add a world class .com tourist destination to his collection with the acquisition of ParisFrance.com.

The urban population around Paris is nearly 12 million people. But it’s the traffic from Europe and abroad that make up the 45 million annual visitors driving the local tourism industry. Omar confirms there will be an upcoming website. This domain name is what investment is all about. Congratulations Mr. Haddedou!

SanDiego.biz is the geodomain website of Mr. Omar Haddedou. Omar is a domain name investor and website developer who builds many of his web properties around the travel and tourism industry. He first began investing in domain names in 1999 beginning with various City+Restaurant.com combinations (since he had previously been a restaurant owner). At the time, Omar was not heavily involved in the internet and consequently sold the restaurant domains for a nice profit.

In 2001, Omar created New Marketing Online and began to develop websites for customers. He also began investing in .BIZ and .US as he recognized that the growth of the internet would eventually exhaust the .com pool. Omar noticed that .com’s were consistently selling for high premium prices. This led him to invest in the newer web addresses that would eventually attract greater attention as the internet’s good .com’s became unavailable.

In addition to SanDiego.biz, Omar also owns and operates a number of other geodomain websites: Tulsa.us, SantaCruz.us, and PebbleBeach.us (world famous for golf and slated to be the site of the 2010 U.S. Open).

Omar acquired San-Diego.us in 2003 and developed the property using some of the skills he honed designing sites for others. Having learned about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), San-Diego.us now enjoys the second position on Google for the search term “San Diego Hotels”. Nice! Stats research indicates that San-Diego.us drew between 5,000 and 12,000 site visitors per month through 2008.

Never one to sit idle, Omar continues to innovate and develop … recently moving into French geodomain destinations like Vallauris.com and Poitiers.com. Other high-quality domain names from Omar’s portfolio include: WashingtonDCLawyers.com and CaliforniaRentals.us.

In 2005, the gross domestic product of Dubai was $37 billion. While initially constructed using oil money, oil now accounts for less than 6% of total revenues since the local economy has become diversified … significantly funded through financial services, real estate, trade, and tourism.

At this point, we can only speculate as to how Dubai.info will be utilized. Information on tourism and travel booking would be logical options considering the Dubai International Airport served over 34 million passengers in 2007 alone. That’s an average of over 93,000 passengers per day.

A premium domain name like Dubai.info leaves the door wide open for development and monetization. Geodomain names are a beautiful fit for .info, the internet’s official information extension.

The flip side is that some of the most ruthless, cutthroat competitors you’ll ever meet in the world of business work for these same newspapers. I consider myself a generous and fair individual by most standards. But often in the business world, generous and fair, will get you nothing but a bloody nose.

I’ve had my fair share of let downs and hurt feelings trying to work with my local newspaper. If nothing else, they fed me a dose of reality. If they want to shut you out, they’ll shut you out. And your journey of 10 miles becomes 50. Lesson learned. But times change, and tables turn. Perhaps there is a thing called karma after all.

Reality check: There is a steady decline occurring year after year in newspaper circulation and advertising revenue. The paper is a static, somewhat outdated rendering of news that occurred yesterday. No video or sound, no hi-definition picture, no reader comment or interactive component … at all.

Hello, internet technology! Just as the 8-track surrendered to the cassette tape, and the horse & buggy gave way to the automobile, such is the fate of the traditional newspaper company.

Now, it’s not like they didn’t have fair warning. In fact, some of the age-old papers secured their city’s geodomain. Take Boston.com (The Boston Globe) for example. Nearly 4 million visitors per month and a 52% increase in online viewership in the past year. That’s saying something. The shift is more like an earthquake and approaching tidal wave.

All of this leads to one conclusion –> geo domains. To have the city in .com is a literal gold mine of opportunity. No question about it. Now, it won’t be cheap either as city geodomains in .com are like owning the holy grail.  But, there are several excellent alternatives that will also feed the dream and perhaps still leave one above water financially speaking. My favorites for geodomain development are .biz (business), .US (United States), .info (information), and .TV (television/online media). Also for the mobile phone market is .mobi which provides standards for displaying the internet on mobile phones …  growing in popularity by the minute.

Some domainers have looked ahead, made the investment, and laid the proper groundwork for becoming the center of the universe in their corner of the domain world. Hard working domain investor & blogger, Elliot Silver, acquired Burbank.com recently and launched into development. He holds the keys to the city, as do brothers Michael & David Castello with PalmSprings.com, or Skip Hoagland with Atlanta.com. Let’s not forget state geodomains and even countries such as Spain.info. These geodomain websites are the future. They are connected to the entire world via the internet. And unless my dog eats through my internet cable, they’ll be receiving my patronage, my business, my revenue, and my recommendation. Will there still be a newspaper floating about in those cities 5 years from now? Perhaps, lining the parakeet cage.

Goodbye newspapers of the world. I no longer need you. I have my own media empire at my disposal. Strange irony.

Almost forgot to post the story that fueled tonight’s writing. It is the bankruptcy declaration of the Minneapolis Star Tribune who presently are claiming $661 million dollars in debt. Something about a “severe decline in advertising revenue”.

I read all about it … on the internet!