Recently, a client of mine asked me what I thought about the Wall Street Journal article clipped below. Soon, you may be able to buy domain names ending in industry and location specific extensions. So, instead of .com, you can choose from extensions like .nyc, .books, etc. I have to say that it seems like a great thing - at first. How many of us have tried to find the perfect combination of letters and numbers only to find that every possible combination was already taken. Unfortunately, the result can be long or confusing domain names and may be costing you business. My client, Depaz Rhum, wanted the domain
www.depaz.com. Since the domain was already taken, they had to settle for
www.depazrhum.com. Not the end of the world, but I would bet that more than one person has accidentally ended up on the competitor's website. With the new extensions, your most desired names may now be available. So, what's the downside? Can you imagine how confusing it could be trying to remember if your bank's website was citibank.bank, citibank.money or citibank.citibank. But, as Tim Switzaer of NeuStar, Inc. says, "It's not the domain name that matters but what you do with it."
Relief may be on the way for small businesses stuck with bad Web addresses. |
Next year, the organization that oversees the Internet will start selling rights to an unlimited number of new top-level domains -- the suffixes like .com that appear at the end of Web-site names. Domains likely to appear include those that take their names from popular subjects, types of businesses and geographic locations, such as .books, .flowers and .nyc. |
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