There’s one thing that all of us have to go through when creating a new website: choosing the correct domain name. It is so important to choose the right domain for your site. Something that your customers will remember off the top of their head, something that looks professional, and most importantly, something that suits your website. Not only do you have to consider this, however; there’s also the issue of whether your chosen URL is taken or even whether your URL could mislead potential customers.
Why are new domain suffixes being released? In theory, the new suffixes – everything from .baby to .books and more – should help website owners to create unique, exciting domain names. A whole assortment of new URLs can be established and used to release these new suffixes. Businesses can create memorable, to-the-point URLs that catch their customers’ attention with a little bit of creativity.
The real question concerning the TLDs is will these new suffixes help? Well, according to Google engineer Matt Cutts, they give your Google rankings a boost. Back in 2012, Matt Cutts reassured us all on his Google+ account. That the new Top Level Domains (TLDs) would not receive favourable treatment over the TLDs we are used to, such as .com and .org. Good news for anyone who wants to stick with their .com domain, but what does this mean for anyone who gets a new TLD?
It means that to achieve anything with the new suffixes, you have to do the same thing you would do with any website. There is no easy, one-step way to get instant ratings on Google, no matter what anyone wants you to believe. To improve your Google rankings, you need a site people to want to visit. A website that is both informative and attractive with well-done content and no attempts at spamming. Moreover, most notably, a website that meets your audience’s interests, one that caters to your audience’s interest and not to yours.
Despite this, Google seems to advocate for the new TLDs; they’ve applied for 101 different TLDs, from the obvious. Google and .YouTube to TLDs that weren’t reasonably as expected, such as .baby and .lol – a complete list of the TLDs they applied for can be seen here, on Google’s official blog2. On the other end of the spectrum, however, is Apple, which is used for only one TLD, .apple. In total, almost 2,000 TLDs were created, including the first generic Arabic online suffix, شبكة (pronounced dot shabaka).
So, will the new TLDs catch on and stick with us for years to come? Alternatively, will they fall short? Only time can tell. The internet is constantly changing, but at the same time, its patrons hate change with an unbridled passion. Whether or not the new domain suffixes stick depends on if the site is good enough. People will come to it no matter what it is called. The internet rules have not changed; good content wins over a good URL.
What Google officially say about the new top-level domain names.
