New gTLDs

[LupoNorth]

We have seen that there are a lot of new gTLDs coming available. Does Moz have any insight on how the various search engines are going to treat them. Will they be a backwater of the internet or are some of them likely to become relevant and used by major companies.  If we were to simultaneously set up new sites based around a .com domain and say a .shop domain, would they both grow equally?

[Bob_van_Biezen]

Hi LupoNorth,

I didn't read anything about it but my guess is that the perception of the search engines on these new TLD’s will change over time based on how they get adopted. At this moment I would say a .com domain will rank better then .shop although the purpose of this TLD should be clear to humans.

I know search engines are struggling  with TLD from other counties. So if I’m in the Netherlands (in fact, I’m) and I decide to use www.example.it because I got a IT business the domain won’t pop up in the Dutch search results (although the text is all Dutch). Something similar could happen with the new domains. If for example .shop gets adopted by a lot of web shops it could happen that a blog would score less with a .shop domain.

I hope this helps and I’m interested in how others feel about this subject.

[LupoNorth]

That is a good point. The US not really having a country domain means that we have end up with a different perspective.  It will be worthwhile trying to see how some of these new domains work soon. Some will be really useful for email. Sending to joe@nike will be much easier if your company can afford to fork out for their domain.

Has anyone heard if companies are testing these new domains?

Hopefully we will get some more thoughts on this.