On origin of Extensions

Well there is a lot of fuss about ICANN’s proposal to add unlimited domain extensions. I believe that this will have a two fold effect on current domain values.

1. Domain values of recognised extensions (.com, .uk, .de) will increase over the next few years while the companies that are building brands under .news .jobs .ebay etc are busy working their shit out, spending money promoting their new extensions etc….
2. There will come a tipping point when over 10% of direct navigation changes from searchterm.com or searchterm.co.uk to search.term (think of ebay.co.uk changing maybe to uk.ebay) . At this point, current domain brands will be big enough to withstand the change in this activity but new, younger brands will not, rendering the undeveloped, parked, low traffic, searchterm.com nearly valueless. Partly because with an increase in real estate, SEO/ppc/offline marketing will become the major factor, which requires investment, which in turn affects purchase price. Panic selling will become the norm as people try to realise the value of their big domain portfolios. Over the long term – It can only negatively effect prestige in the .tld namespace – prestige being a major valuation factor. i.e. It will be more prestigious to own .brand than brand.com.

My advice. Don’t sit on anything, build it or sell it, unless its making good money on type ins.