Global domain name management and online brand protection specialists Lexsynergy Limited today announced the second installment in their monthly webinar series designed to inform and update brand owners on new domain name extensions.
The webinar, “Geographic Extensions and the Relevance of City TLDs“, will explore the impact and relevance of geographically oriented domain name extensions as well as their prospects in the evolving domain name marketplace.
“Since our first webinar on 3 November to 1 December, 25 new domain name extensions will have held their initial Sunrise Launch phase for trademark holders, or entered General Availability (GA), when all parties can purchase domains,” said Daniel Greenberg, founder and Director of Lexsynergy Limited.
“Among the 20 extensions that enter GA during the month of November are several geographically focused extensions, so-called geoTLDs, including .melbourne, .quebec, and the three South African geoTLDs, .capetown, .durban, and .joburg."
“In fact,” said Greenberg, whose company has corporate offices in Johannesburg, South Africa, “two new geoTLDs will enter GA on 1 December 2014, .moscow and .москва for the Russian capital city.”
Based on statistical data published by nTLDStats.com, more than 418,000 of the 3,245,036 (or 12.89%) names in the new domain extensions are from geoTLDs., three of which, .berlin (154,008), .london (58,351) and .nyc (50,602), have over 50,000 registered names.
“Perhaps most important for brand holders to understand is that, within the domain name industry, this isn’t a particularly high volume based on previous months,” said Mr. Greenberg. “For the average consumer, however, 25 new extensions may sound like a staggering number, especially when you consider so many consumers are only familiar with .com, .net, .org and a handful of country code extensions like .de and .co.za.”
Says Greenberg, “What brand owners must understand is that as Internet naming expands at historic rates, a consequence is ‘hyper-localization’, meaning consumers can now register TheirBrand.london and TheirProduct.brussels.”
Mr. Greenberg advises corporate clients to familiarize themselves with these new geoTLDs and to examine their brand protection strategies to address them.
“Some geoTLDs, like .nyc, have residency restrictions in place to prevent speculators from snapping up the best names,” says Mr. Greenberg. “Others have no such protections, meaning brand holders may be especially vulnerable to fraudsters and squatters.”
Reservations for the 1 December webinar are being accepted at http://goo.gl/h0afRX or by email to [email protected].
Lexsynergy Limited is an ICANN accredited registrar (IANA ID 1466) with its head office in the UK (company No. 05992211) and global offices in Austria, Australia, South Africa, Tanzania, and the United States.