.Guru and .Singles among first new domain names

The first English generic Top Level Domain names (gTLD) have been released with '.singles' one of the lucky nine.

New domain names are set to trickle out slowly over time with the nine new English gTLDs following the release of Arabic, Chinese and Cyrillic domains in October.

The nine new English domain names are: .guru, .ventures, .camera, .clothing, .lighting, .singles, .voyage, .holdings and .equipment.

The first Australian ‘.brand’ domain names – for example ‘.monash’ or ‘.nab’ – are expected to be delegated in around a month. Last year there were 41 applications for a local ‘.brand’ domain name, for the full list click here.

New gTLDs are expected to be released at the rate of about 10 a week until it ramps up to roughly 20 new names a week next year, according to Melbourne IT’s Bruce Tonkin.

Tonkin, chief strategy officer at the domain name registration company, told B&T the influx of new domain names is set to have a big impact on marketing.

The new ‘.brand’ and ‘.generic’ domains will allow brands to create targeted destinations for their promotions.

“Imagine if NAB was running a promotions on loans, they could have a very targeted domain name like ‘loans.nab’ that would give you information specific to that campaign,” Tonkin said.

“When looking at more generic names like ‘.bike’ you could imagine brands using them for a particular promotion. For example, Kmart could go with ‘kmart.bike’.

Small businesses are also likely to get in on the action and move quickly to register a ‘.generic’ domain to shorten their web addresses.

“We have done a bit of analysis on domain names that include the word ‘bike’ or ‘camera’ and there are literally thousands and they are all quite long. Michaelscameras.com.au could now abbreviate that to ‘michaels.camera’ which is much easier to use in marketing.”

Every new gTLD that goes live has a Sunrise period where organisations with a trademarked name have first dibs to register their name at the second level. For example, a brand such as Rolex may move to register its name under to ‘.watch’ to creative ‘rolex.watch’.

Once the gTLDs are open for general registration Tonkin suggests jumping in quickly.

“The thing to understand is that as these names the launched the opportunity to get the best name is to get in early.”

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