Healthcare.gov seekers flock to Healthcare.com: Traffic leakage alert

Healthcare.com highlights a big challenge to developing a site on something other than .com.

What’s one of the biggest challenges to creating a website on a non .com domain, at least in the United States?

Many people looking for your site will inevitably type in .com instead.

VentureBeat just wrote regarding the owners of HealthCare.com, who have been laughing all the way to the bank ever since the healthcare exchange launched on Healthcare.gov a few weeks ago.

“We generated over 100,000 quote requests in October, and since HealthCare.gov launched the site traffic has increased 10 times,” Healthcare.com owner Jose Vargas told VentureBeat.

Vargas also owns Healthcare.org and .net. Apparently .org sites can benefit from leakage, too, if users associate the site with a non-profit or the government. Traffic to Healthcare.org spiked from basically nothing to 60,000 visitors overnight.

Vargas bought the domain name for over $2 million.

All the more reason the U.S. government made a big mistake by letting Medicaid.com expire and fall into private hands.