New Top Level Domains approved
ICANN has approved to expand top level domains so that companies can register their brand as a TLD. You can see sites like .ibm or .nike come to the web soon. This is a major change from our current boring TLDs (.com, .net, .biz, etc) as well as country specific TLDs (.ca, .fi, .de, etc.)
Costs for new domains
But before you go and think about registering a top level domain for yourself, keep in mind the hefty filing fee of $185,000 plus the annual $25,000 to renew.
Powerful branding
This new domain is likely to tempt a number of companies to register their brands (much to the benefit of ICANN.) I guess only brand owners of trademark names can apply for registration, or else we’ll have some cyber squatting. But whats interesting is how generic domains such as .news or .erp or .crm are bound to create biding wars.
SEO implications
And why wouldn’t businesses compete for them? Most search engines already assign weight to keywords in second level domains. Now, imagine the SEO importance of the keyword in the TLD itself.
I’m not sure how Google will view these new domains, but probably rate them high if the site content matches with the keyword in the TLD. After all with such high costs, spammers aren’t as likely to setup SEO link farms on these domains.
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