New gTLD’s: Clever marketing tool or waste of time?
Getting New TLD’s
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced on the 23rd of October 2013 that the first new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLD’s) from its New gTLD Program were delegated. This means they were introduced into the Internet’s Root Zone, the central authoritative database for the Internet’s Domain Name System. This is one of the most exciting offerings in ‘internet real estate’ is coming onto the market! A new set of Top Level Domain’s ( New gTLD’s) extensions (eg .com, .co.uk, .org) will become available. ICANN, the Internet Corporation for assigned names and numbers calls the new TLD’s ‘a platform for the next generation of creativity and inspiration.’
The four strings delegated are:
شبكة – Arabic for “web/network”
онлайн – Cyrillic for “online”
сайт – Cyrillic for “site”
游戏 – Chinese for “game(s)”
Why get involved in these new domains?
With millions of websites carrying the domain extension .com, this virtual internet space is becoming more and more crowded. Having TLD’s such as .pizza, .travel will potentially be a way of reorganising how information is displayed, marketed and, most importantly; found on the internet.
Business’s will be able to target consumers through industry specific gTLD’s, targeting goods and services to the people who want them. Not just industry specific but geographically with extensions such as .london and .newyork will allow be available, providing precise presentation and targeting of offerings.
So what influence will gTLD’s have on SEO?
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is an increasing popular topic for all websites- if you don’t have an optimised site; you don’t exist to Google! United Hosting discussed the possibility that ‘Google is said to be revising algorithms to help support the introduction of new domain extensions.’ But Matt Cutts head of Google’s webspam team came out to say ‘Google has alot of experience in returning relevant web pages, regardless of gTLD’s. Google will attempt to rank new gTLD’s appropriately.’
Google are a company at the head of innovation in technology and their next moves are very difficult to predict. However, at Build Me A Site we will keep you updated with the situation and how the gTLD’s releases play out! And to read more about these new gTLD’s, check our ICANN’s website Clicking Here.
