Yesterday, I wrote a post about the fact that in my opinion, geo new gTLD (especially city new gTLDs, as Christopher Hofman pointed out in a comment) are clearly outperforming niche new gTLDs (such as Dot Furniture) but wait a second… what’s a niche new gTLD?
Ok, in some cases, it’s obvious that an extension can be considered a niche gTLD. Dot Furniture, Dot Jewelry, Dot Attorney and so on.
But what about let’s say Dot Guru or Dot Expert?
Aren’t the terms too broad for the category “niche new gTLD” to make sense?
On the other hand though, we can’t call them “everything goes” new gTLDs either because… well because while they are broad, they aren’t as broad as new let’s say Dot XYZ or Dot Link.
Let’s start with the most obvious categories.
Category #1: “Everything goes” new gTLDs such as Dot XYZ/Link
Category #2: Niche new gTLDs such as Dot Furniture/Attorney/Jewelry and so on
Category #3: Dot Brands (Dot Nike, Dot Apple and so on)
The previously mentioned three categories are in my opinion pretty straightforward.
But what about extensions such as Dot Guru and Dot Expert?
In my opinion, they’re too broad to be included in Category #2 but not broad enough to be included in Category #1.
I’d like to hear your thoughts on this, so I’ll end the article for now because it’s only intended to be a brainstorming post.
Once I read some opinions, I’ll work on a more detailed one.
So:
1) What do you think about new gTLDs such as Dot Guru or Dot Expert, should there be a separate category for them and if so, what should it be called?
2) How would you categorize new gTLDs?
I think it’s very important to work with clear definitions when it comes to new gTLD categories because tracking results based on categories rather than just analyzing each gTLD on a case by case basis might prove to be quite interesting.
August 29th, 2014 at 1:30 pm
How about a classification along the lines of “vertical” (vs. “horizontal” or “topic-neutral”)? I guess that is the major distinction between the likes of .bike, .lawyer etc. vs. .guru, .expert, .company etc.
August 29th, 2014 at 2:06 pm
Call the groups by what they represent (signal): product/service, profession, location, community (not well defined by ICANN), i.e., forget about the word niche. Niche can have niche (pun intended) uses too, such as, for example, a reference to a British Thoroughbred racehorse within, say, .Horses or .Animals. Obviously, some groups/signals overlap.
I don’t like to refer to .Brand as a gTLD. Call it either .Brand (my preference) or nTLD for new TLD.