My latest article is now up on The Industry Standard - “Chinese, Arabic and Hindi domain names to go up for sale - finally!” The post discusses the recent domain name news from ICANN, specifically, the announcement that International Domain Names (IDNs) will soon be available in non-Roman languages.

To this point in history, domain names have all been in Roman characters. The reasons for this are explained in the article, so I won’t go into them again here, but I just can’t emphasize enough the impact that this new resolution is going to have on the Internet. Let’s put it this way - if you don’t speak Mandarin Chinese, Russian, Hindi or Arabic, you might want to start learning. English is on the decline, and although it is still the primary language of business, this recent announcement is just continuing to solidify the importance of the rest of the global community on the future of the Internet.

The following are some interesting facts & figures that I came across during my research:

- “The German ccTLD (.de) remains the largest ccTLD in terms of the total base of domain name registrations, with .cn and .uk as the next largest ccTLDs. Quarter over quarter, .de grew 2%, .uk grew 4% and .cn grew 23%. When viewed year over year, .cn’s growth at 199% outpaced both .de (11%) and .uk (16%).” From VeriSign’s Domain Name Industry Brief (pdf)

 
Chart from Webhosting.info

- In China, over 80% of the population cannot speak English. - ICANN

- 92% of the world’s population does not speak English. -ICANN 

- By 2050, more people will speak Chinese, Hindi (and its close relative, Urdu) or Arabic as a first language than English. -EurekAlert

- The languages growing the most rapidly are Bengali, Tamil and Malay, which are spoken in various countries in South and Southeast Asia. -EurekAlert

Source: EurekAlert

- The IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) is currently testing the new ccTLDs - here is what some of them will look like:

 
From IANA site

I can’t help but get the feeling that the United States’ days are numbered in terms of its dominance of all things Internet.

This week, ICANN voted to expand gTLDs (generic top level domains) so that there are no longer restrictions on the gTLDs that can be registered and used online. A gTLD refers to the letters that come after the last dot in a URL string, such as .com, .gov or .org. Previously, there were a limited number of generic top level domains, but this resolution by ICANN, the body that controls and governs the domain name industry, will open every gTLD as a possible domain name extension going forward. These new gTLDs are likely to start hitting the market in the fourth quarter of 2009.

A companion resolution was also pushed through, which will allow domain names to use non-Roman characters. This means that Chinese, Arabic and Cyrillic characters, for example, will all be able to be used in domain names.

These are historic decisions by ICANN, although there is a lot of debate about what kind of actual impact they will have on the industry. For more details on the specifics of what was announced, check out the announcement here.

Here are some of my initial thoughts:

- This decision is important and will have an impact. Since this announcement, I have heard a lot of people making the case that the only domain name that really matters is .com. Although I agree that the .com domain name will stay the strongest for the foreseeable future, this thinking is really short-sighted. Although technology is advancing quickly, the Internet is still in its infancy. It’s hard to predict what will happen in two years, let alone in 20 years. I think that there is a very good chance that other gTLDs will become important. I’ve seen evidence of this in other countries, and honestly, it’s even possible that the gTLD system could eventually go away entirely.

- It will take awhile for any new gTLD to become popular. People are comfortable with their current domain names and will likely stay with them in the short term. But this decision opens the door for a new site with a new domain name to come in and make a splash. And if that happens, it could popularize a new gTLD quickly.

- This decision does nothing to hurt domain name speculators, it only helps them. The decision does not lessen the value of their current domain names, and it opens the possibility that they might be able to add a whole batch more to their already-valuable portfolios. They’ll be able to use the techniques, tactics and strategies (not to mention automated scripts and money!) that they created in the first round of domain name speculation to continue to round out their portfolios.

- A new energy is going to be injected into the domain name industry that hasn’t been seen in awhile. I expect a lot of creativity, and I think that we’ll be pleasantly surprised by the fun and interesting ways that people think up of capitalizing on this opportunity.

- There are significant trademark ramifications. Here is a good story if you’re interested in that.

- The average man on the street is going to be confused when new gTLDs are introduced. There will have to be some serious marketing and explaining done to help translate this to the millions who are just now using .com comfortably.

- The current alternate extensions are in trouble. I agree with this analysis that .info, .biz and a few other currently existing gTLDs will probably not do as well going forward.

- The biggest impact will be with the companion decision, which is that ICANN is now going to allow non-Roman characters in domain names. This means that countries that don’t use Roman characters in their primary languages (China, India, Russia, etc.) will now be able to register domain names in their native languages. This is the one area that I think that there will be real, meaningful and quick growth. Asian, Arabic, Cyrillic and other scripts will now be able to have domain names - this is huge based on the numbers alone:

“At the moment, there are one-and-a-half billion people online and four-and-a-half billion people for whom the Roman script just means nothing.”  

There will be some shakeout on the specifics of this decision in the coming months, and expect a lot of buzz as the end of 2009 approaches.

Photo by husin.sani

I’m back from my vacation, and it was terrific. Basically, Chris and I spent an entire week having fun and relaxing - and not a bit of work was done by either of us. It was a real vacation!

Of course, I may not have officially been working, but I was on the lookout for business ideas and interesting perspectives on the Internet during my time in Ireland. Only two things stood out:

1) Most ads, billboards and marketing that I saw in the country included a URL, and most of those URLs ended in .ie. I really was surprised at the prevalence of the country-specific domain name usage in Ireland. I can’t be sure if it was just Ireland that uses it’s country code, or if that practice is common across the world, but I definitely expected .com to be more popular in Ireland than it appeared to be, at least in what I was looking at as I drove across the country. This trend (or non-trend) is something that I am going to be watching closely for globalization projects.

2) In Ireland, a widget is related to Guinness, not the Web. In fairness, many people in Ireland probably think of the Web when they hear the word widget. But for us, during this trip, the widget was all about the Guinness.

According to this interesting post by Fred Wilson that I read when I got back from my trip (Why Widgets is the Wrong Word for What We’re Doing), widgets as they relate to the Web may soon be an outdated term (or concept) anyway. But for posterity, a widget is “an object on the computer screen that the user interacts with,” according to Wikipedia. It’s basically a piece of code that can be used on a Web page (or blog) to deliver specific content or functionality to a Web page. (I am not convinced that the widget is going away, although Wilson makes an interesting point.)

In terms of Guinness, the widget is a little plastic ball that is in the canned version of the beer that releases gases to help make the head that Guinness is so famous for. This link provides some very helpful information (and a picture) about the Guinness widget.

I told you I was on vacation and not working, right?

I just published an article for The Industry Standard - The allure of the .com domain name. The article deals with the reasons that the .com top-level domain has become by far the most popular in the world.

To see just how big a lead .com has over its closest competitors, check out this chart. The chart shows the top 6 TLDs and the percentages when compared against each other, not the percetages when compared against the total of all TLDs. (The data comes from here.)

As part of the research for this article, I posted a question to the Targeted Traffic Forum, which I am lucky enough to be a part of. This site, which was founded by Rick Schwartz, has the best domain-related conversations of any that I have ever seen on the Web, and the people who hang out in this forum have really great insight into the domain name industry.

The question I posted was this:

I am working on an article about how the .com extension has maintained the highest value and allure compared to other top-level domains. I’m curious if anyone has interesting thoughts or theories as to why .com is so much more valuable.

I got some really great responses, and I wanted to include some of them here.

Joe Alagna, CentralNic:

95% of the largest brands in the world and their sub-brands advertise .COM domains every day on TV, Billboards, Radio, in Print, and Online. Here are the top 10…

Company | 2007 Ad Spend

proctorandgamble.COM (et. al.) | $3.4 Billion
att.COM | $2.3 Billion
verizon.COM | $2.1 Billion
generalmotors.COM (et. al.) | $2.1 Billion
timewarner.COM | $1.7 Billion
fordmotors.COM (et. al.) | $1.6 Billion
waltdisney.COM (et. al.) | $1.3 Billion
johnsonandjohnson.COM (et. al.) | $1.3 Billion
sprint.COM | $1.3 Billion
newscorp.COM (et. al.) | $1.3 Billion

Total for just the top ten advertisers in the US | $18.6 Billion

There are 18.6 billion reasons that .COM is the most recognized Tld on the planet (benefiting all .COM owners in the world) and this doesn’t include the long tail which is a larger piece.

The biggest advertisers in the world advertise .COM domains. Dot.COM is burned into our collective consciousness every hour of every day. It’s as simple as that.

Mark Teaster:

I’ve seen the arguement go around many times - and the explanation that seems to fit best to me was always the “implied” restrictions on .net (As Networks etc ..) and on .org (Non-profit and various Organizations).

Derek, Aardwolf MUD:

Somewhat philosophical, but this is similar to how language itself develops. The words we use for most things are arbitrary, if a “rose” had been called an “esor” then, by convention, it becomes a standard. If “Blog” had been called “Webiary” (web diary) we’d all be using that term. It doesn’t matter *what* the term is, but once it is established it takes generations to change it. You can’t just suddenly declare that a “blog” is now known as a “webiary” and everyone falls in line. This is where .COM is, imho.

Paul W. Smith Jr., Realty Net Sales.com LLC:

I think also, if you asked the majority you will find their favorite website is a .com. Allot of us visit .com for daily activities. The .com is synonymous with the internet, for instance you can ask people if they have gone to your myspace page and you don’t have to say myspace.com. Also, have you googled it, again, no mention of google.com, just google. Ebay.org, nahhh, that even sounds funny. You can type in google.net and it redirects to the .com. The .com is the internet.

How about your favorite news site, car site, travel site, search site, etc….. Dot com is the gold standard. Name an interest or hobby and I can name a .com website for you but I cannot name a .net or .rw .or .ps, or .tv etc…

Will it change? Possibly but it took a generation to learn, it will take a generation to change.

What do you think?

I recently was doing research for a project that led me to the Technorati Top 100 - the list of the 100 most popular blogs as ranked by Technorati.

For my project, I was looking at the design of the various top blogs, so I had two browser windows open. In one window, I had the page with the list opened. I looked at the names in that window, closed the window, opened the other window, and then typed the domain name into the address field in the new window. I don’t have two monitors, so this entailed closing the window that had the names listed before opening the other window.

What did I find? I mistyped a LOT of the names.

Here are the ones that I got wrong in the top 30.

Correct URL / What I typed

www.gizmodo.com / www.gismodo.com

www.BoingBoing.net / www.BoingBoing.com

www.dailykos.com / www.dailykoz.com

www.thinkprogress.org / www.thinkprogress.com

www.consumerist.com / www.theconsumerist.com

www.scobleizer.com / www.scobelizer.com 

The interesting thing I found through all of these errors is that none of these mistyped URLs redirected to the correct domain name. They were all owned by domain name speculators who were out to make money off bad spellers who might click on a link on one of the parked pages. This practice entails buying domain names that people might accidentally type into the address bar - like I did with these popular blog names - and then putting a page up on the site that is fed by ads - so every time someone clicks a link on one of those pages, the speculator earns some money. For more on this industry, read this article.

The lesson? Try to consider easy-to-do misspellings of your domain names, and buy those as soon as you can - maybe not when you buy the initial domain name (if you’re trying to save on cash) but as soon as you know that you’re going to do something significant with the domain. And don’t forget to snap up the .com, .net and .org extensions, as well.

Photo by Marcin Wichary

Just saw the news that Pizza.com sold for $2.6 million in auction. I’ll need to add this to my list of million dollar domain names.

Some people think the the domain name industry is crazy, that domains are selling for too much money. I disagree. There are a limited number of .com domain names, and having them is going to get increasingly valuable unless (or until) another naming convention takes over on the Internet. But that will be years away from now if it even happens.

My philosophy - if you find a good domain name, buy it immediately. Of course, I am not in the market for million dollar domain names, but I do think that this is a good buy.

Thinking about About.com yesterday reminded me of one of the reasons that I paid such close attention to them for so many years - About.com is the best example of a successful company that uses a subdomain structure for its domain names.

There has been a perpetual debate over which is better way to set up the domain names for a site network:

- A subdirectory structure, for example www.sitename.com/ships 

- A subdomain structure, for example http://ships.sitename.com 

In my mind, this debate was recently ended by Google’s Matt Cutts. In his words:

“Historically, it’s been kind of a wash about when to use subdomains vs. subdirectories…My personal preference on subdomains vs. subdirectories is that I usually prefer the convenience of subdirectories for most of my content. A subdomain can be useful to separate out content that is completely different. Google uses subdomains for distinct products such news.google.com or maps.google.com, for example. If you’re a newer webmaster or SEO, I’d recommend using subdirectories until you start to feel pretty confident with the architecture of your site. At that point, you’ll be better equipped to make the right decision for your own site.”

Bottom line: either way is fine. Pick your favorite and go with it.

It’s been common knowledge for awhile that when you’re buying a domain name, the best way to ensure that you’ll get it before someone else registers that domain is to buy it as quickly as possible. In the past, the timeline was a few hours between your initial search and the time that it was swept out from under you. But now there are reports surfacing that the timeline is down to MINUTES.

I’ll say it again - if you’re searching for new domain names, be prepared to buy.

Search engine optimization or SEO is the practice of trying to get your Web site to appear higher in a search engine’s organic search results for the keywords for which you want to be listed. The idea is that if someone is searching for a term that is related to your business, you want to be listed at the top of the search results page because that person will be more likely to click on your listing and come to your Web site. Organic search results are the “natural” search results, or the listings that are free. More about organic vs. paid listings below.

There are many factors that contribute to where sites are listed in organic search results - the combination of these factors is called the “algorithm.” Only some of these factors can be impacted with SEO tactics:

• Domain name - If your keywords are listed in your URL, you’ll have a better chance of being ranked higher in the search results for those terms.
• Duration - The longer your site has existed, the higher you’ll be ranked.
• Content - If you have high-quality content on your Web site, and the content matches the keywords for which you’re trying to rank, you’ll have better luck getting listed. It’s also beneficial if your site has frequently updated content.
• Metadata - This is data that allows you to describe your Web site with a title, description and keywords. Metadata sits behind the scenes on your Web page and plays a factor in organic search results.
• Incoming links - If your site has a number of other sites pointing to it, the search algorithms will determine that it’s of higher value and will list it higher in the search results. You will get an even bigger benefit from incoming links if the text that links to you contains the keywords for which you’re trying to rank.

SEO may sound like a relatively simple concept, but there are SEO experts who execute these tactics full-time and trust me - it’s more complex and difficult than it sounds. This post is just meant to be a starting definition of the term, and not a how-to or training guide in any way. For that info, follow the resources links below.

One quick comment about organic vs. paid search listings: All the various search engines display both free and paid listings on their search results pages. For example, if you type the term “SEO” into Google, the results that you get back will be a combination of organic (or natural) search results and paid search results. The screenshot below has the paid search results areas circled in red.

Let me say again that SEO can be fairly complicated and I am just scratching the surface with this definition. I definitely recommend checking out some of these additional SEO resources:

• Wikipedia’s SEO definition
• SEO Chat - articles and insight into SEO
• Search Engine Strategies - Conference series that covers SEO in great depth
• Search Engine Watch

I happened to catch a story on CNN’s The Situation Room a couple of days ago about some Joe Biden-related domain names. Turns out that the domains www.biden08.com and www.joebiden2008.com are owned by Fallon O’Brien from Indiana. Apparently, O’Brien tried to sell the domain names to the Biden campaign, but they didn’t want to pay. From a campaign spokesman:

“We we not going to overpay for a domain. We already have one we’re quite happy with. That’s JoeBiden.com, and people find us just fine.”

What is O’Brien doing with these domains? He isn’t using them for any kind of negative ads about Biden, nor is he monetizing those pages. Instead, he’s simply redirecting them to his candidate of choice. Currently, that’s Mit Romney. (He used to send the traffic to the Barack Obama Web site, but he changed his mind on who he is supporting.)

The story ended and Wolf Blitzer sent the newscast back to Jack Cafferty who remarked:

“No shortage of whack jobs out there on cyberspace.”

I don’t disagree with the sentiment, there are a lot of whack jobs out there, but I really don’t think that a domain speculator who is supporting a presidential candidate qualifies.

Full transcript here