Has Dot Com Had its Day? Are The Days of Not Dot Com Here?

Has Dot Com Had its Day? Are The Days of Not Dot Com Here?

You can say and think what you like about all the new TLD's that are being released today, as to whether or not they have more authority and dominance and preference compared to and with .COM. But they're still being made and while it's still early to say for sure if they will one day outgrow .COM in terms of popularity and preference there is a lot of evidence pointing that way right now!

The latest and hottest TLD that some big domain operators are watching right now is .WEB including Google, Afilias, Donuts, Name, NameCheap and Web.com and Nu Dot Co domain registrars where an auction for it ended at $135 million to Nu Dot Co which are backed by Verisign. One of the biggest known prices for a TLD with the last being $41.5 million for the .SHOP TLD which was purchased by GMO domain registrar so this purchase is very substantial and a very significant moment in domain history.

Is there a pattern developing here? What does that Domain Registrars are spending significant money on purchasing the rights to sell and own a certain TLD? It shows you the confidence they have in .WEB and any other TLD's being popular and adopted by the Internet instead of and in preference of a .COM. Despite its authority.

In case of this actual TLD, Donuts registry recently tried to sue ICANN by saying that they wasn't transparent enough about who owned Nu Dot Co in the auction who are now owned by Verisign. I guess they didn't realize they was up against such a huge entity!

It actually makes a lot of sense for Verisign to purchase the operator rights to the .WEB as they already own .COM and you need to diversify today to survive and succeed and the .WEB TLD is perfect for them to do that. Plus they have enough resources to push and peddle what some domain industry experts are saying will probably win domain name winner of the year awards.

In fact it could even be the popularity and prevalence of .COM is the only real obstacle that other new TLD's have to overcome. It's not just this particular auction for .WEB rights to sell that is generating a lot of attention right now. And there are still other different TLD's that are still becoming available now so we may see similar large prices paid for other TLD words as well.

It shows that there is a lot of importance placed on them and their relevance on the web. Plus with the web becoming a more semantic and interactive place and Google itself putting less emphasis on synonyms and similar words and more on the actual meaning of a search itself it's easy to see why they would generate so much interest and investment within the domaining, internet and website industry.

Even the founder and CEO of the .CLUB TLD has said that;

The .WEB auction exceeded our expectations on value. That being said, it is clear that strong domain extensions like .WEB have substantial value. Although there are hundreds of new extensions launching, there are only a finite number of really strong names like, .WEB, .SHOP, .APP, .BLOG, and .CLUB that are fairly generic but have meaning. The not-com revolution is happening, and the landscape of the Internet is changing forever.

He's banged the nail right on the head. The TLD itself has a lot of meaning to it. It's people friendly, its descriptive, it has meaning. And for some domain names that meaning is many times more valuable than a .COM. .CLUB says we're a club you can join! Maybe. It can be used for official or unofficial clubs. The same as .PUB or .BAR might and .SHOP says hello we are an online shop. And blogs that are something.BLOG tell people that it's a blog about something you might like. SEO.BLOG for example.

.WEB could actually have a lot of meaning for sites that are about the actual web. Plus it's also a TLD that can be used quite broadly similar to how .CLUB can. Only the "web" represents everything to do with the Internet or the "Web" that we all surf today.

So they have a lot of meaning both in the eyes of people and in the eyes of Google as well in its quest to categorize everything and after all its words that rank and they are words at the end of the day. They can help from that perspective but it will always be backlinks that matter the most 9 times out of 10.

What do you think of the .WEB TLD extension?

Do you think it could be the next big thing in domaining?