I’ll be developing a very strong one word new gTLD domain (Stocks.XYZ) soon as an experiment (I’ll turn it into a megasite with 100+ articles) and for the most part, there aren’t *huge* differences between developing a new gTLD and developing a dot com, a ccTLD or a legacy TLD domain.
There are however a few things you should be aware of.
For example, there will be some issues with certain browsers. In time, I’m 100% sure new gTLDs will be supported by pretty much all browsers and even right now, there are no issues with most of them. However, there will be occasional issues at the beginning and certain visitors might point out that “there’s something wrong with your site” or something along those lines.
Email-related issues are also to be expected. In time, these problems should and most likely will disappear but for the time being, be sure to keep in mind that you might come across email-related problems.
Next, you have to also take the confusion factor into consideration. If you’re mostly going after search engine traffic, it won’t be as much of a big deal as it would be if you were planning something like an offline marketing campaign (TV/radio ads, billboards and so on) but still, the confusion factor will most likely be one of the most important issues you should be aware of, especially during the first couple of years.
These are (not necessarily in this order) three of the most important issues you should keep in mind. Two of them (the browser and email-related problems) will probably be resolved fairly quickly but as far as the confusion factor is concerned, it will take longer.
New gTLD development comes with advantages as well as disadvantages. On the one hand, you can develop very strong one worders such as Stocks.XYZ in my case but on the other hand though, issues such as the ones I mentioned need to be taken into consideration as well.
August 8th, 2014 at 3:08 pm
Bing & Yahoo continue to favorably rank EMDs so a 100-article site with some backlinks may rank on page one on Bing/Yahoo. However, given the competitive nature of that keyword, I seriously doubt the site will rank on the top half of page one of Google for “stocks”. A site which ranks on page fifty or even page three isn’t going to get any Google search traffic. Perhaps you could target long-tail keywords where the competition is not as competitive. It should be an interesting experiment but keep in mind that development considerably increases your investment in a domain – either your time or the cost of outsourcing development and SEO work.
August 8th, 2014 at 6:37 pm
I have a geo.contractors site that ranks on page one of bing and yahoo but is nowhere to be found on google. I don’t know if google is set up to rank geo.whatever? Maybe this will change soon.
August 8th, 2014 at 10:14 pm
The gtlds suck. Why would anyone waste theur time knowing that your prospects will type in .com accidentally?
August 9th, 2014 at 12:14 am
Why would anyone waste their time buying desert land? — Palm Springs
Why would anyone waste their time with land that does not have an ocean view? — Napa
Why would anyone risk buying a car made in Japan? — Honda
Why would anyone waste their money on an electric car? — Tesla
Why would anyone buy a frozen dinner? — Frozen Food Industry
Why would anyone buy a bottle of water when it’s free? — Bottled Water Industry
Blah, blah, blah…
August 9th, 2014 at 6:40 am
Congrats Another great thought provoking article. Good luck with dev of Stocks.xyz BTW.
So one thing you mentioned really resonates with this creative Internet marketing guy.
VANITY
As owner of Vanityemails and vanityGTLD and vanityGTLDs I see a huge GTLD marketing and positioning opportunity that is sadly 100% overlooked thus far.
GTLDs bring new life into the application of domains as powerful vanity web and email addresses that until now have been impossible to create.
Will brand marketers, GTLD domain registries, Registries and IM consultants parlay the benefits of new found vanity names and email addresses to domain buyers and business owners?
Message to GTLD registries, famed marketer Jay Abrahams said “people are silently begging to be led” sooooo, Lead them! Tell them and Teach them how to use the power of vanity web addresses to promote and grow their business awareness sales and profits.
Yes there is gold in the GTLD hills. But it isn’t going to jump out of the ground … If you want it you gotta do some digging aka work.
August 9th, 2014 at 8:11 am
gTLD’s;
– look better than the first gTDL .com mercial
– easier to type
– memorable
– the dot makes it easier to read
– will always be the shortest version for any two keyword combos
Lets hope the registries don’t jack up renewal prices.