New Brand Tlds

[vishalkhialani]

Hi,

So ICANN is going to be coming out with new custom brand TLD. Essentialy if I have got it right you can register something like .ibm .amazon instead of .com or .org

My problem is I can't seem to find a creative way to leverage this.

I can understand ibm having one for its brand but me ?

What do you think? how can we can make use of this for seo and linkbuilding ?

Cheers,

Vishal

[AnthonyMangia]

Considering that it will cost $185,000 USD just to apply for a .brand TLD, you may want to first make sure that this will be an issue that you or your clients are realistically likely to encounter before you lose any sleep over it.

That aside, nobody's quite sure how these TLDs will affect search rankings.  Given Google's growing (and increasingly worrying, for some) trend of trusting established brands in search rankings, it is certainly possible that having a .brand domain name could help your search rankings.  Moreover, some aggressive applicants are likely to try to snag keyword-rich .brand domains, although it is anyone's guess as to how Google will weigh the importance of keywords in the TLD algorithmically.

Distilled had a pretty good article on their blog a while back.  It's not an authoritative source for how this will play out (that doesn't exist, because we simply don't know enough yet), but it is an interesting analysis.  Definitely worth a read if you're interested in these new TLDs.

[vishalkhialani]

wow 185k , I am out for sure.

Thank you for the distilled link . Its a good read

[MashBonigala]

I can not see the merit in the .brand TLD. I think www.amazon.com is better than www.xyz.amazon. May be I am missing some thing here. Why would they even come up with this?

[AnthonyMangia]

Well, it's going to make registrars a ton of money, that's for sure.  So the financial incentive is there, for them.  Big corporations will eat it up too - and why shouldn't they?  It offers a great branding perspective, and because of the somewhat selective nature of who will be allowed to actually register for these TLDs, adds a definite legitimacy factor to any company fortunate enough to get one.