What gTLD Would You Want to Own?

Talks about the new gTLD domain extensions appear to be ongoing in Singapore, and I would expect that we’ll soon know whether they are going to be approved at this ICANN meeting. When the approval is eventually given, I believe there are going to be dozens of applications for gTLDs such as .nyc, .insure, .eco, .vegas, and many others.

Whether many or most of the new gTLD domain names will be available for sale to the general public or simply used by the companies that operate them is something that is an unknown. Companies awarded gTLDs after the expensive application process will likely have that choice and can make their own business decision about how to sell, market, and use their new domain extensions.

We do know that the .CO Registry is having considerable success selling .CO domain names. That can be attributed to strong marketing efforts undertaken by the registry. Some applicants will surely try to emulate this, while others may decide to keep and utilize the domain names for themselves or their company.

All that being said, if you could own and operate a gTLD, which extension would you choose? I would probably choose something like .insure or possibly a .geographic extension. The .insure would be a choice if search engines are kind to new gTLD and .geographic for consumer adoption since businesses in that city would likely purchase their domain names if they had the opportunity.

So… which gTLD would you want to own?

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

41 COMMENTS

  1. I would want .insurance or some other profitable keyword term. I am sure it will be expensive if they auction them off to more than one bidding party.

  2. .POKER

    As a player and affiliate for poker I see an excellent niche for .poker domains

    Poker domain names have sold for loads of cash, poker traffic is highly valuable.

    Despite recent poker domain seizures, the legal climate in the U.S. is trending toward legalization and regulation of online poker. Most in the industry believe there will be a second poker ‘boom’ in the U.S. with large U.S. gaming companies like Caesars, World Series of Poker operating legal online sites. Internationally the market is still strong.

    As a hobbyist and enthusiast of poker I think it would be interesting and profitable to create a namespace around a great pasttime.

    • @ BFitz

      You’d rather have .eat than .restaurant?

      @ Captain and Tom

      I would be concerned with gambling names with the US government. Maybe in a few years, but it would be a concern of mine.

  3. Eat is the call to action for a restaurant. Everyone who eats, pays 🙂

    Eat transcends industries, everyone has to eat but nobody has to eat in a restaurant. TV commercials for packaged foods, etc.

    Restaurant is too hard to spell, too long.

    I owe Burbank articles, I have been camping but will be back at it tomorrow.

  4. Elliot we already working on .inc for nearly 13 Month’s and We are coming with a Great service’s and Promotions.

  5. @Elliot

    Regarding .restaurant you got me thinking. There are 560,000 restaurants in America. (the largest employing private industry) Minus large chains like McDonald’s and Applebees, who I believe would not touch .restaurant, and you are at about 450,000. That leaves a pretty small customer pool. In the restaurant business we call it our “customer universe.” Of this 450,000 universe what percentage would convert? 10% would be huge so 45,000 reg’s in America which has the most restaurants of any English speaking nation. Even then 45,000 is a stretch because many operators, like us, have multiple locations under one domain/site. I would not even register as a defensive play although I grabbed many .CO and have 200 X.CO/ shorteners ready for social media marketing.

    • @ JSL

      Perhaps because of the search engine benefit that may come to fruition with new gTLDs. It’s likely there will be some benefits.

      Also, consumers may adopt longer extensions if they make sense, like .paris or .whatever resonates with them.

  6. The only thing i’d want other than .com would be .tv… outside of that i can’t imagine a need for anything else.
    If i had to choose then maybe .hotel, .ins, .home, .web, or maybe even .360… although i doubt i’d buy into any of them other than maybe .web.

  7. I believe the defining part of any URL will always be the 2nd level domain, which is the part that is unique, it’s the string “chosen” by the registrant.

    Now, if you were to offer a long TLD, it would seriously limit your possibility for growth because the amount of short 2nd level domain that make sense with your long tld is finite. (Long 2nd level domain with long top level domain makes very very very little sense in my humble opinion.)

    As for Search Engine juice, I think everything in that sphere is a declension of quality. If the site hosts quality content, Google will like it. Sure there could be a Google presumption that a given TLD is more prone to quality content.

    At the end of the day, I still want a domain that I can use for email and use on my business cards. Long TLD fail in that respect.

    On another note, I think the few successful new gTLDs will be the ones that bring innovation and not just a new combination of letters.
    Dot Shop sounds great but if it doesn’t do anything more than dot com/net/org/ccTLD (i) it won’t justify a price tag higher than com’s (ii) it basically won’t have anymore mindshare than com/net/org/etc (iii) even worse, it won’t have anymore mindshare than all the other newgTLDs that will launch during the same period.

  8. It’s going to be a total clusterfuck. The only ones who will succeed are the deep pocket corporations who use the new TLD’s for their main brand.

    Everything else will require such huge amounts of capital for marketing, promtion, advertising, branding, etc that I seriously doubt anyone is going to last.

    The big money like always will be selling the TLDs to the speculators who will be dazzled and blinded once again chasing the quick flips to the next round of of speculators.

    Domainers can’t even build out the .com’s they have in a big way. So how are they going to do it with extensions that the public won’t get. A pr release and getting some quick web fame briefly won’t do the trick.

    The TM lawyers are going to make a fortune as well going after all the infringers.

    .Com has TRILLIONS behind it and no other extenstion will ever get that kind of money.

    It will be interesting to see how it all plays out and good luck to all those who venture into the next wave of domain investing.

  9. The extensions that I thing will do real well are:

    1. .TV – For television networks that will be online.
    2. .Gay – For the gay community.
    3. xxx – For Adult content (Good for walling it off).
    4. .Insurance – Good for the insurance industry.

  10. I would choose .CON. On top of being a great .COM typo, it symbolizes what new gTLD program represents.

    In most of these niche extensions not many keywords are great fits.

    Brad

  11. .CO

    is and will always be the best of all gTLDs

    On a more serious note, though,

    I am in need of help for the renewal fees.

    My plea to the registery is that I hope there will be a lower fee schedule for bulk renewals.

  12. @Cline

    “My plea…” is not a sound investment plan and hope is for the Sabbath, not business decisions. Once again your comment ends up a back-handed compliment for dot co. Let your brandables drop, don’t throw good money after bad and please don’t take on debt.

    Education does not come cheap…

  13. They say that those who do not learn from hostory are destined to repeat it. As such, how about .FAIL or .WASTE?

    Both reflect what is most likely going to occur just like .Museum, .Travel, .Aero, .Jobs, .Coop and .Mobi.

    Stick with .COM — just like conventional real estate, they stopped making it.

  14. just going to throw some ideas out there…

    .news (news organizations)
    .$ (money/finance related – sites)
    .intl (international)

  15. +1 for any major geo. Having a .geo is more desirable than having, for example, .nike. With .nike or.casino or .restaurant, you are limited to domains that relate to the extension.

    A .city/state/country is much more versatile…you can have shoes.nyc, casino.nyc, bobsburgers.nyc…the .geo possibilites are endless

    @Elliott….Maybe “Robert Cline” is a pseudonym or an anagram. I plugged “Robert Cline” into an anagram maker and the 5th result was “Terrible Con” 🙂

  16. I have one that’s a guaranty to be a success…

    .COM

    Why would you want to buy anything else when it is so obvious that .COM is where the action is at…and will continue to be at!?!

    I agree that this entire gtld concept is a huge .FAIL

  17. Clearly the best new potential gtld is .SUCKS .
    Published under the 1st amendment – it could make huge profits by selling to the most disgruntled customers, domaindaddy.sucks , peypal.sucks etc, the possibilities are endless.
    Think of $ in the subniches like *.co.sucks lmaoooo

  18. I think that the short is the extension the best is the option right?, a TLD is not for fun only cause the e-marketing is not a game at all. something like .mrkt.

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