Blog - Brave New World of Domains

Not a lot is happening in the world of web design, but the growth of new top level domains has exploded. This is a good thing, but what does it all mean?

When the internet first appeared in our lives most people wanted a .com domain. The .com was a general domain that encompassed the world and meant 'internet'. It meant you had a web site. Then people wanted the .co.uk domains, and then the .net, .org, .ltd.uk etc.

Now we have a massive load of new domains, domains like .london, .wales, .builders, .business, .taxi, .pub etc.

But they don't seem to be either widely used or particularly successful. Combined with their cost, their take up is disappointing.

However, they still seem highly attractive and many prime domains are bought up instantly.

Perhaps an indicator of their intricacy is the .xyz domain which is cheap, usually 99p or 1p and is wildly used, mostly for low quality fly by night enterprises, a little like the take up of the .org domain which again is commonly used to host suspect sites that don't last.

The .xyz domain is interesting as it means very little, but of all the new domains is most wildly used, and that's because of the cost. This means that if he other domains were cheap they would be used to.

Domains such as .digital or .engineering can cost £50-200 a year and other domains can cost many hundreds or thousands of pounds, especially as a premium domain from a reseller, ie an organisation that has snapped up domains in the hope of flipping them.

The failure of these domains to really kick off is mostly due to the door state of search engine integrity in the current age, 2021. Simply put, the singular imperative to buying a domain is for search engine optimisation. For example, if you were plumbers then buying the .plumbing domain might seem like a no-brainer, but you can look for yourself and you might be hard pressed to find anyone that is using that domain. That’s both because it costs £50 a year and because people have found that they do nothing for search engine optimisation, or even harm it.

Clearly the imperative is that the .plumbing domain will differentiate your organisation from less specialised organisations. However, in practice it usually means your website will never rank for anything, mainly in Google.

Again, we come back to the issue of Google, the gatekeeper to everything 'internet'.

Google is like the party host that only allows people to attend that dont smile, laugh or speak. Googles idea of a great party would be a funeral, only more toned down, more sombre, more miserable.

TWS own a number of these new domains and can safely say that the mere suggestion of enhanced search engine positioning is a dream.

So what are the benefits?

Well. Mainly the branding, for example, sign work and marketing. For example, tws.builders would clearly offer building services. What’s not to like about that? Other than the cost or the failure for it to rank well. As a result most people stay with their regular .co.uk domain option, even new enterprises.

Another factor involved in the take up of these new domain is  the fact that most organisations already have a domain, and so it’s only really new organisations that might be inclined to take up a new domain. Mid-range companies probably won’t see any benefit and the big companies don't really count, their success will be little effected by their domain name, they are small in number and no one notices.

However, going forward, they clearly have scope and will one day be as common as mobile numbers are today as people become accustomed to the idea that domains are not restricted to the .co.uk and .com extensions and can be more freeform.

It’s certainly an exciting time for brand AND picking the sort of domain that might otherwise currently be being squatted on. So much so that there are quite a few gold nuggets to be found, just waiting to be bought.

If you want to discuss the new domain opportunities out there, then get in touch.

Below is a list of some of the new domains available:

• .accountants
• .agency
• .art
• .associates
• .blog
• .builders
• .cafe
• .catering
• .cleaning
• .club
• .company
• .construction
• .consulting
• .design
• .digital
• .engineer
• .engineering
• .entertainment
• .equipment
• .events
• .expert
• .fitness
• .furniture
• .gallery
• .games
• .garden
• .global
• .hosting
• .hotels
• .law
• .legal
• .lighting
• .limited
• .london
• .ltd
• .management
• .market
• .marketing
• .media
• .news
• .online
• .photo
• .photography
• .photos
• .pics
• .pictures
• .plumbing
• .productions
• .property
• .pub
• .rentals
• .repair
• .restaurant
• .salon
• .search
• .services
• .shopping
• .social
• .software
• .solutions
• .storage
• .studio
• .supplies
• .systems
• .taxi
• .tech
• .technology
• .tools
• .tours
• .trade
• .training
• .travel
• .wales
• .website
• .work
• .world
• .zone