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Kara Trivunovic
Sr. Director of Strategic Services
Kristin Hersant
Vice President of Corporate Marketing
April 10, 2009
New Domain Endings: Opportunity or Extortion?
According to a recent article by USA Today, the number of domain extensions available could skyrocket exponentially in 2010. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) recently announced plans to release the ability to buy any web address extension that you can think of, ranging from a to z. This means that marketers will be able to buy domains like www.airfare.deals, www.luxury.goods or www.tylenol.pm and use them as both their website and email sending domains.
Some marketers are worried that this will indefinitely open up the number of domain names that squatters can purchase and hold hostage for exorbitant ransoms, viewing this as “a form of extortion.” And certainly, email marketers should keep an eye on this to thwart potential phishing attempts coming from domains such as www.americanexpress.cam. However, given that more than 50% of registered domain names leverage the original .com and .net extensions, I think it’s safe to say that they’ll continue to represent the lion’s share of the market and resonate in consumer’s minds.
In my opinion, this change is more of an opportunity than extortion. Here’s why:
- The endless number of possibilities presents a creative opportunity so vast that it would take some pretty deep pockets to buy all of the domain names that a brand marketer could possibly create.
- The fact that these domain names aren’t branded in the consumer consciousness make them a risky investment for a squatter.
- Visitors aren’t likely to visit these pages unless the person who owns them spends money promoting them.
And in that last point remains the key. Whatever you decide to purchase, make sure that you promote it clearly and widely, or it will likely go the way of the last 18 domain endings that were released. What remains to be seen is how the search engines will treat these new URLs. Will they give prominence to the .com and .net domains or give all domains prominent ranking as it pertains to a specific keyword? Either way, this will be a very interesting and important development to watch.
Posted by: Kristin Hersant at 7:00 PM
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