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ICANN, or the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, yesterday announced plans to allow the expansion of Top Level Domains (TLDs).
Companies can now have brand-specific TLDs, such as .ibm if you're IBM. You can also create generic TLDs such as .sports or .seo.
But will these new TLDs help with SEO? (And could I possibly have squeezed another acronym into that question?)
Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land says it won't. "It’ll just enrich some new TLD owners at the expense of brands who will now spend even more to fight cybersquatting," he writes.
"Bottom line — the new names will almost certainly mean nothing special to search engines. They won’t have any super ranking powers," Danny continues. "If you managed to get .money, that doesn’t mean you’ll rank tops for money-related terms any more than people with the existing .travel domains do well for travel — because they don’t."
So if you want those domains to prevent cybersquatting or for branding purposes, by all means, go for it. Just don't expect any SEO benefits.
