2014 domain overhaul plans

The web could change forever with domain overhaul plans set for 2014. New .uk and other branded suffixes could cause headaches for firms and the way firms start their web-based businesses could change forever.

For years the web has bumbled along with domain suffixes such as .com, .net and co.uk

.London domain names

However, 2014 will see this change as the humble web domain suffix starts to change the face of the internet forever. As V3 noted last week, the .london domain is now up for grabs and interest is already said to be high.

This new domain is just one of over a 1,000 that are being made available by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) alongside others such as .technology, .cloud and even company-specific ones such as .Apple and .Google.

Furthermore, Nominet, the organisation responsible for domain addressing in the UK, has now announced that a new, shorter .uk suffix will be made available from 2014, which could mean many firms are forced into some tough branding decisions.

A website such as aprompt could change from aprompt.co.uk to aprompt.uk, for example. But Nominet has said no old suffixes will go, so many firms may choose to stick with their existing setup. However, that could lead to an imposter stealing the similar .uk domain and causing confusion for customers.

To stop this happening, Nominet is giving firms with existing .co.uk domains the chance to have the .uk version of their domain first, and they have a five-year holding period to decide if they want to use it. After that, though, anything goes.

For firms, this poses some questions. Do you take the new domain and just run it in the background, and if people head to it they’ll end up on your site anyway? Or should you make the short domain the new brand for your firm? Or try and use both at the same time?

And what about the new top-level domains on offer from Icann? Is it worth splashing out for an entirely different type of domain – one that internet users may not realise exists – or should you just stick with the same domain you've been using for years and trust that no-one will come up with a domain brand that proves better for marketing?

It may take some years for all this to happen, but domains as we've known them look set to change forever.

Contact aprompt if you would like to register your domain name for your website or click find a domain name. Give us a call or email us and we will register your domain names, on your behalf.

Article courtesy of v3.co.uk