ICANN Approves Expansion of New gTLDs

This Monday, a historic decision was reached that will change the Internet as we know it today. ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) approved the expansion of new gTLDs (Top-Level Domains). Currently there are only 22 gTLDs (.com, .net, .org) and 250+ ccTLDs (.uk, .de, .fr etc).  By 2013, it is expected that we may see several hundred new gTLDs. For example,  .Canon, .Hitachi, .NYC, .ECO, .CAR etc.

"ICANN has opened the Internet's naming system to unleash the global human imagination. Today's decision respects the rights of groups to create new Top-Level Domains in any language or script. We hope this allows the domain name system to better serve all of mankind," said Rod Beckstrom, President and CEO of ICANN.  HEXONET would like to congratulate ICANN on reaching this important decision. This decision follows many years of discussion, debate and active engagement with business groups, government and the Internet community.

ICANN's decision has received huge coverage this week by the mainstream media. It has been very interesting to see the different angles that reporters haven taken on this news.  For example, some reporters have used the headlines like "the shake-up of .com,"   "dotAnything to Take Over the Internet," and even "So Long dotCom."   Although these are definitely attention-grabbing headlines, we feel that they are not completely accurate. This leads us to ask our readers for their feedback on a number of interesting questions.

1) What impact will the new gTLDs have on .com?  Most of the domain industry forums and blogs that we regularly follow are abuzz with chatter concerning this. Many will agree that .com (established in 1985 and the largest TLD by far) will always be king.  Many refer to .com as the 'oceanfront property' of the Internet.  There is a strong argument to be made that gTLDs introduced to date have actually strengthened the value of .COMs.

2) What will the impact be on other existing gTLDs like .net, .info and .org?

3) And how about ccTLDs?

4) What will the impact be on SEO? This will be very interesting to see how this plays out. However, initial responses are indicating that the impact will not be very significant. According to Catalystonline, a leading search marketing firm, "Search engines like Google and Bing do not differentiate between a .com and a .net suffix, and certainly do not give a .COM any additional ranking power because of it. Where there might be a bit of opportunity would be the use of keywords in the URL itself, however, keyword rich URLS  is only one of many organic ranking factors and are less significant than in the past. SEO requires more than just a great domain name and more TLDs doesn't necessarily equal more rankings."

We at HEXONET will be monitoring developments of the new gTLDs very closely.  We encourage you to provide us with your comments to the questions posed above as well as any additional feedback you may have.

Courtesy creative interactive agency Jess3.com