What are GTLDs?

If you are reading this, you are one of the 2 billion plus internet users worldwide. With such a large number of constantly growing internet users, ICANN (the owners of the internet) have decided to create many more website address suffixes. For instance, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com already exists but soon there could be anything from Amazon.shop to Amazon.solar or even “amazon.amazon”.

These suffixes are called GTLDs (Generic Top Level Domains) and at present there are 22 of them. In a few months however, there will thousands of them! The idea is that, although Johnsmith.com and johnsmith.biz are useful, johnsmith.law says a lot more about John’s business. So: these names are about benefiting consumers and promoting brands. ICANN opened up the internet and for the princely sum of $185,000 brands and companies were able to apply for their own GTLD for their brand.

You can see the list of successful applications and new GTLDs here.

But what will all these new GTLDs do to society? Has the act of typing the .com and .org become such a habit that consumers will be unable to find anything anymore? Or will consumers simply rely on search engines more? Will search engines successfully rank these new GTLDs above the tried and tested .com’s or will they rank higher for being automatically more relevant? Will the brands themselves really benefit?

Here at Frank Domains what we do know is that these new GTLDs will almost certainly create a rise in online crime. Recent record high cybersquatting figures from the World Intellectual Property organisation certainly demonstrate an upward trend and it can only get worse with more domains.

As yet, we don’t know which suffixes will enter the public arena and which will remain solely branded, but we’ll keep you updated!

In our next blog post we will look at this rise in online crime and how you can protect your company’s domain name!