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RSSAs if marketing on our little Worldwide-Interweb / Series of Tubes wasn't already wild enough, the governing body over all Internet domain names just held a vote to ensure that things will get a little wilder. Or at least a bit more confusing for users, IT departments, marketing departments, enterprise natural search marketers and trademark interests. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) voted at its June meeting in Paris to open up root level generic Top-Level Domains to private entities. In addition to commonly known extensions -- such as .com, .net, and .org -- individuals, corporations and non-profits may apply for .anything, or literally any word or phrase not taken that contains three or more characters. This decision will allow major corporations to own and host their Web presence off their own root level domain, such as .google, .apple, .search, and also control sub-domains (search.google, iphone.apple, bob.smith, etc.). Applicants would have their choice of running a hosted sited on the Top Level Domain (TLD), or opening up the TLD for registrations.
Though it will likely be 18 months before we see the first rollout of a vanity TLD, there will be many implications for marketers and consumers, particularly with the threat to natural search engine presence that accompanies moving a legacy domain name. It also appears to be yet another headache for brand and trademark monitoring, except these defensive registrations come at a much higher price tag.
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The lure of a vanity TLD is great for some marketers, so over the next two columns I will discuss some of the challenges that the new TLDs might bring, covering fees and registration process, and the search implications of maintaining a top level domain.
A few examples of the possibilities
So what does the concept of a vanity TLD mean to marketers and major corporations? Fundamentally, it means the following domains could exist as a location for a corporate Web presence:
http://www.searchinsider.mediapost/
Search+Keyword.Google
Or these generics:
http://www.goldendelicious.apple/
From here, you can let your imagination run wild. The possibilities have left many corporate marketers and IT professionals chomping at the bit to get in line for the application process.
The problem with maintaining positive search equity in a gTLD move
Moving a Web site from a .com or other legacy TLD to a new extension such as www.Domain.Brand has many implications from a natural search optimization standpoint. Many of the same rules for moving between secondary domains (ex. acmewidgets.com to acme.com) apply to moving from a secondary domain to a managed vanity TLD (ex. mediapost.com to home.mediapost). Accrued search indexing history, domain age (with a live Web site running), and the legacy inbound back links pointing to the existing domain are just a few considerations for maintaining positive search equity.
Major brands with a positive search legacy on their Brand.com are at a great advantage over direct and indirect competitors in natural search, based on the authority that search engines have granted to their domains. While newer or less authoritative sites may take months or years to obtain a ranking or any significant flow of traffic from search engines, a legacy domain can obtain competitive rankings within days, or sometimes hours or minutes, simply by deploying keyword-themed content.
If you are considering moving to a new .Brand or .Generic TLD, there is potentially a great risk to search history and positive natural search engine optimization performance. If you are considering creating a new architecture on many different secondary domains banked on a vanity TLD, ask yourself the same questions as if you were considering re-architecting a site on all sub-domains (for example, see Microsoft.com subdomains).
There is much at stake with concern to the amount of traffic derived from natural search, and also the amount of revenue driven through a site. I would highly encourage a review of a few of my past columns on the topic of search engine equity, as it relates to a domain or TLD move:
A Site That's Worth A Search Fortune
http://www.mediapost.com/blogs/search_insider/?p=398
Natural Born Search Killers (PT I)
http://blogs.mediapost.com/search_insider/?p=329
Natural Born Search Killers (PT II)
http://blogs.mediapost.com/search_insider/?p=349
I am not trying to say that a vanity TLD is completely out of the question, just that there are major implications for natural search. But I think there will be many interesting and innovative uses of vanity TLDs, and in those cases it will be important to weigh what you are getting when moving a name, in order to preserve as much as you can. For a Fortune 500, the dollars generated from natural search are not chump change. We are talking tens of millions, to hundreds of millions. that may be flowing in from natural search. Some companies are aware of their return; many others are not.
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Maybe in 20 years time we'll look back on ICANN's decision as being inevitable, but I think it will be chaotic before we get there.
How many times have you seen one of the 'new' suffixes being used? The Sunday Times regularly carries a full page ad for Egypt's tourist authority which uses the domain egypt.travel - I was selling domain name registrations in 1996 [for one of the UK's first registrars] and I still have to look twice every time I see that URL. And this time next year it could be travel.egypt ! This side of the Atlantic even the new[ish] dot eu has not really caught on – I'm the only one I know who uses it !
I can see some sense in [for example] ebay 'renting out' domains for its 'sellers' – alanstoys.ebay has ring of common sense. Or places – my home city of Sunderland, for example 'selling' domains to local businesses - alanstoys.sunderland. But whooaaa - it's going to get mighty confusing for users. And who would 'own' and administer the dot sunderland domain? The city council? The university? A local entrepreneur? Some business in downtown Springfield? Or Shanghai? Or horror of horrors … someone in Newcastle [local rivals, think Red Sox/Yankees]
If ICANN's proposal gets off the ground [it's a big if, domain name followers will recall that the six new extensions were coming 'next year' every year from '97 onwards] there will be more traffic for the search engines because no one [in the world] will be able to guess at an organization's domain and suffix – and the value of dot coms will go up because they will remain the 'default' for a good while yet.
Which, I think, brings my post around to the gist of the original article.
Another case of wait and see.
Steve - lots of discussions like yours are happening right now. It's going to be interesting to say the least.
the logistics of creating a TLD database and server may not really be a good idea, however..
to one of our fortune 500 clients..
me: "well if you make this new domain, are you going to become a reseller for anyone that wants the same domain?"
them: of course not
me: i'd reccommend you put the money into content generation on your current .com domain and not bother with the expense of setting up a domain server and having to hire someone manage it 24/7/365.
i think it's a good idea on a limited basis.. as in the .xxx domain or .sex domain or .porn domain or .erotica domain.. the person who sets up a registry for those will make good money and it will help the search engines filter content away from children. otherwise.. it's going to be a cluster****.