Should You Care About The New Extensions

Have you ever stuck in a situation where you can’t find a perfect domain name? Have you ever given a thought of registering a domain extension other than .com? Have you doubted the authenticity of domain extensions? Most probably YES.

Top Level Domains (TLDs) or domain extensions are the letters that come after a dot in any website’s name. Some of the most ideal extensions that the public is familiar with, are .com, .org, .net, .edu etc. Extension .com has already captured a market of approximately 49.3%. It is one of the highly reliable, genuine, and desirable names. However, as time rolls by, the large pool of domain names registered with .com has started to shrink. This has left many entrepreneurs and businesses disappointed because they either had to adapt or entirely change their domain name. 

For example, if a company’s name is Vintage Photography, it would ideally want to get vintagephotography.com. Due to unavailability, they might have to accept names such as vintage.com or photography.com or maybe vintagephoto.com, which do not communicate what their brand truly stands for. Big businesses might go beyond a limit and pay a hefty fee to purchase the domain name if it is available. But it is not the case with emerging companies as they can’t afford this burden. 

To our surprise, even after facing multiple issues with traditional TLDs, companies are afraid to go ahead and register with different domain extensions such as .biz, .shop, .brand, .tech, .pharma, .inc, .co, .wiki, .uk, .in etc. 

They are scared of the fact that these extensions will decrease their reputation and searchability in google rankings. But the reality is that Google’s top priority is still a high-quality website no matter what the extension is, and businesses must take advantage of this. It is highly recommended for the new firms to be innovative with their domain names. This will eventually help them create short, easy, and memorable names.

ICANN has provided a list of 1000+ new extensions, for businesses to choose from, under four categories. 

1)    Generic Top-Level Domains (gTLD) – This category contains 1243 extensions, including .com, available for the general public.

2)    Country-Code Top-Level Domains (ccTLD) – A two-letter code is assigned to the countries. For example – .eu (European Union), .in (India). As of now, this category contains 316 names.

3)    Sponsored Top-Level Domains (sTLD) – This category consists of 14 premium domain extensions, and all of them are managed by private organizations. These names demand a particular requirement for the registration. Some of the examples are – .edu, .gov

4)    Infrastructure Top-Level Domain – It contains only one name that is .arpa

Some of the big firms have set examples that it is not necessary to run after dot com because you can develop a great name with other extensions as well.

You must be familiar with Google’s parent company Alphabet. It could have easily afforded alphabet.com but chose not to and came up with “abc.xyz”. According to the Larry page, Alphabet company is a pool of so many big and small companies, and in general, Alphabets consists of 26 letters from a b c to x y z. This name gives them a creative edge over competitors and quite easy to remember for customers all around the world. 

Moreover, a new domain that’s taking over the web is dot Inc. It is a TLD for the businesses and available for the public. Some companies already have Inc. after their names, such as Collab Inc. Now that’s a piece of great news because customers can trust your website and its authenticity. According to Forbes, “More than 20 percent of the Fortune US 100 Companies and Forbes 100 World’s Most Valuable Brands have already registered .inc domains”. Some of the top names are – Paypal.inc and Gap.inc

Above all, it’s the good website and content that matters. Brand name, core values and domain extensions should definitely be aligned. Put great efforts in marketing, SEO and branding strategy that will help in getting more leads. It’s the time to open the doors of New Extensions and stand out from the crowd.

Last but not least, if you still have a question, “If not dot com, then what else?” Our answer is Anything.