In a previous article entitled “Alternatives for .COM ? (Part 1)”, I made a selection of new domain name extensions that have a true potential, to replace the use Registrants have of the .com domain names they already use. To avoid confusion, the idea is not to kill .com, the idea is to suggest a domain name extension that offers what .com domain names actually do but improve it.
You said “improve”?
If new gTLDs offer more accuracy, it does not necessarily mean that webmasters, brand managers and other decision makers want to belong to a certain group and focus on a niche or a community Top-Level Domain: you can be in the building industry, build villas, rent apartments and sell houses in … French! Which domain name extension do you choose: all of them and then point each content to the domain name that best matches each activity? I call this brand dilution. Very few companies do this because it becomes a nightmare to handle. And note that email readers often identify the sender and check if the domain name used in the email matches the domain name of the company: one more reason to use one single domain name with a global identity.
Where are you from ? I am worldwide.
New gTLDs offer more precision with geographical domain name extensions: .LONDON – .MIAMI – .BZH for the French Brittany and many others. If this is good news for locals with a business in a certain area, the yellow pages also offer that option and a business willing to offer product and services on Internet may precisely want to avoid geolocalization because customers targeted are worldwide.
Which new domain name extension covers them all?
In my previous article, I extracted a list of domain name extensions with potential to replace .COM in the long term. From this list, I kept those which offer:
- an international identity;
- no niche market;
- no specific community;
- no specific industry;
- no geo-localized destination;
- no IDNs (International Domain Names);
- no business focussed … only;
- no non-business focussed;
- multi-linguism;
Here are the domains I finally selected from a previous list of 44:
.INTERNATIONAL – .NEW – .XYZ – .VISION – .LINK – .NETWORK – .GLOBAL – .CONTACT – .DIGITAL – .WEBSITE – .WEB
My final choice is .GLOBAL, and here is why:
I like the idea of being able to cover most spoken languages in the world. At this stage, it does not matter to me if I don’t cover Chinese because most Chinese readers understand English but I like the idea of covering English, French and Spanish at least. The new .GLOBAL TLD offers that option.
I also like a name which will catches the eye and “global” is somewhat longer than “com”: for newcomers to the domain name world, a domain name ending in .GLOBAL is equivalent to .com, with the innovation added.
Very soon and prior for these domain names to be available at GoDaddy, It will be possible to acquire a domain name that suits your needs: the .GLOBAL registry is offering a live Premium domain auction in June, the 24. Within two weeks, 80 generic .GLOBAL super premium domains will be auctioned and their list is available here. I personally like shipping.global quite a lot. Prior to making a choice, I must admit that I also looked at .website and .web but I ended wondering whether a reader needs to be reminded he is viewing a website: I can see no identity in those two.