The internet landscape looks set to be significantly changed in the years ahead as corporate brands rush to send in their application to register for a new custom top-level domain (TLD) from 12th January until the closing date on 12th April 2012.
Companies and organisations who pay the registration fee of $185,000 ( £120,360) will be able to use their own brand name as part of their web domain name instead of .co.uk or .org. Undoubtedly, at the same time their branding visibility online will be given a key boost to create bespoke web solutions, which take advantage of evolving multichannel e-marketing opportunities.
The strengthening of online identity will help reinforce brand security (by limiting the scope for fraud and cyber-squatting). Consumer trust is increasingly important for encouraging greater confidence and closer engagement across integrated e-commerce channels and platforms with user audiences and prospects.
By the autumn of 2011, nearly 220 million domain name were registered across all top-level domains, both generic and country codes, up by over 18 million or nearly 9 per cent on 2010. Currently, there are 22 top-level domains in existence and ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) claim to have an estimated 1,500 applications for generic top-level domains (gTLDs), with predictions for many thousands more.
Among the first to announce their intention to apply for a dot-brand are Hitachi (.hitachi), Canon (.canon) and Deloitte (.deloitte). One in 10 applications are expected to be geographic gTLDs including, major cities such as London, New York, Berlin, Paris and Las Vegas. In addition, hundreds of examples of gTLDs related to specific niche industries have already been proposed – as well as strings designed to engage segmented interest users such as .music, .sport, .web, and .blog.
While it means that top-level domains will no longer need to use the Latin alphabet and opportunities are offered for use of languages worldwide, there is danger of escalating fraud and scam sites. The new custom TLDs will comprise an exhaustive range of brands, communities, geographic locations, industries, interests, specific services, as well as internationalized TLDs in non-Latin scripts.
However, ICAAN have already said they will be maintaining a stringent policy aimed at preventing low quality, poorly maintained sites operating by making ‘criminal background checks’ of site applications part of the registration process.
A second round of new gTLD applications is planned to start one year on after the April 2012 closing date, but only after a review has been completed to assess the impact of the new TLD application programme on the DNS root zone.
While the scope for extending domain branding may currently be cost prohibitive to many if not an overwhelming majority of ecommerce business on the present round of applications, circumstances are expected to change to allow more sites to register for a custom domain.