The SEO benefit of .brand gTLDs

Posted on January 12, 2012 by Ed Watkinson

Search engines are successful because they provide the most relevant and authoritative results to a users search query. They will always try to return what they feel is the best content regardless of the domain. Provided that the new domain is valid, it contains good content and search engines can crawl it then they will try to return the content.

Given the $185k application fee and then the $25k annual retainer cost I don’t expect .brand domains to take off for big brand names. Large companies like Tesco already dominate the SERPs for their brand name. They own .com, .co.uk, .fr etc and people know these sites are the official sites. Where this is the case there would be very little SEO benefit to registering a .tesco domain. If there is no clear “official” website or you don’t own the popular domains for your company name (eg. The  .com, .co.uk, .net etc domain name) then this would be a worthwhile investment as it will be a way of establishing that you are the official brand.

In addition to the cost, given the meticulous 8 to 12 month validation process that companies will have to go through to get their .brand domain, there will always be an added level of trust associated with domains. Joe blogs isn’t just going to setup a blog on one. The search engines know this and I believe that the search engines will quickly adjust their algorithms to give added authority to these TLDs – provided the content is good! Any domains that appear spammy could experience lower performance in the SERPs.

I believe the bigger opportunity will be for generic domains, particularly in the finance and entertainment industries will we see these domains take off. I would expect companies like moneysupermarket to be aggressive in their application for certain domains (like .loans, .insurance, .creditcards etc. ) and for these markets to be the first to move into the new .brand market

The new TLDs will allow webmaster to capitalise on both the left and right side of the dot to convey meaningful and useful information to search engines. It will make it much easier to implement naming simplicity, which will in turn help a user find a brand and/or product more easily.

For Example:
Old URL                                               New URL

Lexus.co.uk/ct200h.html          ct200h.lexus

Lexustv.co.uk                                   tv.lexus

Lexuscars.co.uk                              cars.lexus

The new URLs are much clearer and easier to remember.

However, for big online retailers like Amazon we may think this is great but with an .amazon domain how do you know what country it is for? You would still have to add a country code to the domain eg. Uk.amazon. With the addition of categories books.uk.amazon the domain starts to lose the logic and the benefit of the new .brand domain. As such for global ecommerce shops its unlikely to take off.

One big question is will they respect copyright,  so if someone’s site is on it you can get it later. If they will then I would advise companies to hold fire until we have seen the impact of the new domains before coughing up. If a company is more interested in keyword rich domain (Such as moneysupermarket) then I would advise to move quickly to ensure you get the domain you want.

In summary, it will take off for keyword domains, not so much brand name terms. In time these domains may acquire more “trust” in the search engines however it will not give you a free pass to the top of the search engines. You will still need to have a site with good content and provide a positive user experience.