Category Archives: search engine rankings

New Domain Suffixes Available

You may have read or seen on the news that some new domain suffixes are soon to become available.

The international authority for top-level domain names – ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) – has approved the expansion of generic TLDs (Top Level Domains) to allow companies and organizations to create domains for their brands, eg .tesco, or create generic names such as .boat or .pink.

As you can imagine the competition for generic domains will be fierce. But before you brace yourself for some more domain name expenditure, make sure you have deep pockets because the application fee alone is $185,000 (approx. £115,000), and the annual fee is $25,000 (approx. £15,500).

So at the moment it looks like this is one for larger corporations. The effect it might have on smaller business is currently a bit of an unknown, however as far a search engine rankings are concerned it seems unlikely that the playing field will be as level as it is now, where smaller business can still compete with big companies.

“ICANN has opened the Internet’s addressing system to the limitless possibilities of the human imagination,” according to Rod Beckstrom, president and CEO of ICANN. “No one can predict where this historic decision will take us.”

Applications for the new suffixes will be accepted from January 2012 with new domains probably appearing within the year.