All Posts Tagged With: "TLD"
My Thoughts on Vanity TLD’s
Over the past week, the domainer blogosphere has been buzzing about the new vanity TLD’s that are set to show up in the middle of 2009. In case anyone missed it, for roughly $100,000.00, pretty much anyone that qualifies a registry (any company can easily become one) can apply to have their own TLD. These custom TLD’s were quickly coined as vanity TLDs.
I think for most of us, the question is not what this is, but how will this influence not just domainers, but the internet as a whole. Are trademark owners going to need to protect their names by getting their domain for each new TLD that is created? Will domaining cease to exist (at least in its current form)? How will the search engines adapt?
Of course, I don’t have an answer to any of these questions, but I have my theories just like everyone else seems to. In my opinion, dot coms will continue to get a boost in value for anyone trying to establish an online brand. On the other hand, though, this may open up a lot of opportunities for someone looking to build online stores, niche blogs, and other types of sites that simply require a strong keyword domain, not necessarily a dot com domain name.
As far as search engines go, this will also be an interesting thing to monitor. About a year ago, after extensive testing on my part, I noticed that I have a much tougher time getting an info domain to rank than I do an equivalent com/net/org. I truly believe there is a natural penalty on info domains that makes it more difficult to gain Google’s trust, and I would imagine I would get similar results with other search engines. Does this also apply to other TLD’s that are commonly associated with spam? I guess what I’m trying to say, is that search engines will initially let things shake out, but eventually it will deal with the new extensions and I have a feeling they will continue to give a strong favortism towards com/net/org.
What do you think about the vanity TLD’s? How will they influence domainers?
Are .Info the Most Dangerous Domains?
Today while browsing through my feeds I ran across a post over at Yahoo about a report identifying the most dangerous web domains.
Obviously it got my attention right away. After reading it, it looks like McAfee has pegged the most dangerous TLD as the .info domain, with .hk (Hong Kong) and .cn (China) leading the way for the ccTLDs.
Of all “.hk” sites McAfee tested, it flagged 19.2 percent as dangerous or potentially dangerous to visitors; it flagged 11.8 percent of “.cn” sites and 11.7 percent of “.info” sites that way.
A little more than 5 percent of the sites under the “.com” domain — the world’s most popular — were identified as dangerous.
More spammers, malicious code writers and other cybercriminals can establish an online presence when domain name registry businesses cut requirements for registering a site in order to boost their profit and profile. The report doesn’t identify domain name registration companies McAfee believes are responsible for those lapses.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of companies are in the business of registering domain names; some are large and well known, while others are small and less reputable, offering their services on the cheap and with flimsy or no background checks to lure in more customers.
The fact that Internet scam artists gravitate to domain name services with lower fees and fewer requirements isn’t new.
I find this very interesting, but also very unsurprising. My guess would be the low cost involved with registering an info domain is responsible for it being the most used domain for evil purposes. A few weeks ago Google accidentally removed all info domains from their index for about half a day. An accident or a test of some sort? 
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