New domain name extensions on the market
In recent years, many new domain names have entered the market. What can we do with these? Should you also quickly register a lot of names, and what, for example, is the consequence for findability in search engines like Google?
Some examples of new names on the market are:
- .blog
- .hotel
- .Taxi
- .amsterdam
- .madrid
- .Cafe
- .accountant
- .movie
In various online articles, it can certainly be read that these extra domain names are very beneficial for hosting providers. There have been many additional registrations from entrepreneurs and consumers who believe they can earn a lot of money by registering a number of “good” domain names. This is because the costs of these domain names are generally significantly higher than those of standard 'top-level domain names'. Domain names such as .sex, .hotel, .online, and location-related domain names are performing particularly well. Furthermore, there has naturally been a lot of attention recently regarding the new 'dot Amsterdam' extension. A question we often receive is: what exactly is the influence of this domain name on Google?
In September 2012, Google already implemented a new change to its algorithm in which it penalizes domain names with an exact match but low-quality content. A website like 'websitelatenmaken.nl' with little good content will no longer rank highly. However, various other studies still show that, on average, websites with an exact keyword match rank higher than other websites.
Google itself, in the person of MattCutts, has indicated that new domain names will in any case receive no advantage over older domain names such as .com and .nl. According to this report, such domain names are treated equally. In that case, it is certainly not advisable to convert an existing website to a new domain name with a better 'keyword match'.
It is still too early to definitively state whether there are actual advantages or disadvantages to these domain names in terms of findability. What can certainly be important, however, is owning such a domain name. Recent studies currently show that consumers have more confidence in an organization with a .nl or .com domain name. We at “Best4u” therefore project more confidence with www.best4u.nl then www.best4u.website
In the future, when more domain names with different extensions rank higher in search engines, this could change. Furthermore, people might then start specifically searching for .Amsterdam extensions to find only 'Amsterdam'-related websites. As a result, there is likely still a lot of gain to be made in terms of branding in the coming years, and as a car dealer, you might be better off registering jenaam.car instead of jenaam.nl.
Personally, I would advise entrepreneurs to register both domain names and, given current trust, to keep the website and its content on the .nl extension while simply forwarding the other domain name. However, the final choice rests with you. The fact remains that the value of a website lies more in the good content, history, and authority that this domain name possesses. Switching to another domain name later is therefore certainly not wise. The choice you make now is, consequently, a choice that will be permanent.
Would you like to brainstorm about this together? We can, of course, always advise you on this. To be honest, however, it is difficult to say at this point which direction it will take.