Too Many Domains? Or Just The Start?
Posted by Neil Palmer in 
It may be hard to imagine life without the Internet, but turn back the clock 25 years and they didn’t even exist. Now it’s likely that you can name more domains you use than friends you have. Have a guess at how many website domains have been registered in this period, and you’ll probably not be close. 192 million. Don’t forget that’s just the domain, not the web pages on that domain. This means the total number of pages runs into billions and keeps growing.
So where will this all go? Will there be a point where there simply are no more domains that people want to buy? Will it get to the point where we only buy and sell existing domains or wait for a company to fail and snap up their site name?
Well the rise of new domain extentions like .biz and .info has given more choice for businesses to choose existing phrases but with a different ending. The only problem that constantly arises with this is the ‘passing off’ rule, where it could be seen that you are trying to gain traffic from a similarly named website on a .com extention, for example.
Introduction of new domain endings will no doubt solve the problem to a degree, but there has been plenty of talk about opening up the whole process to include unlimited extension’s. This could see combinations like seo dot seo or kitchen dot appliances.
The variations at this point would surely see decades worth of domains being available in terms of time. Rather than flooding the market, the end result would still be the best most relevant domains getting to the top of the search engines. There may be billions of poor pages online but the majority are never found.
Here are a list of the current domain extension’s available Worldwide by country code:
domain name extensions
ae United Arab Emirates
ai Anguilla
ar Argentine Republic
arpa Advanced Projects Research Agency
at Austria
au Australia
be Belgium
bg Bulgaria
bh Finland
bm Bermuda
bo Bolivia
br Brazil
ca Canada
ch Switzerland
cl Chile
cn People’s Republic of China
co Colombia
com Commercial
cr Costa Rica
cy Cyprus
cz Czech Republic
de Federal Republic of Germany
dk Denmark
do Dominican Republic
ec Ecuador
edu Education
ee Estonia
eg Arab Republic of Egypt
es Spain
fi Finland
fj Fiji
fo Faroe Islands
fr France
gb Great Britain
ge Georgia
gl Greenland
gov Government
gr Greece
gu Guam
hk Hong Kong (Hisiangkang, Xianggang)
hr Croatia / Hrvatska
hu Hungary
id Indonesia
ie Ireland
il Israel
in India
int International
is Iceland
it Italian Republic
jm Jamaica
jo The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan
jp Japan
kr Korea
kw Kuwait
ky Cayman Islands
kz Kazakhstan
lc Saint Lucia
li Principality of Liechtenstein
lt Lithuania
lu Grand Duchy of Luxembourg
lv Latvia
mil Military
mo Macau (Ao-me’n)
mt Malta
mx United Mexican States
my Malaysia
net Network
ni Nicaragua
nl Netherlands
no Norway
nz New Zealand
org Organization
pa Panama
pe Peru
ph Philippines
pl Poland
pt Portuguese Republic
ro Romainia
ru Russian Federation
se Sweden
sg Singapore
si Slovenia
sk Slovakia
su Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
th Thailand
tr Turkey
tt Trinidad & Tobago
tw Taiwan
ua Ukraine
ug Uganda
uk United Kingdom of Great Britain
us United States of America
uy Uruguay
ve Venezuela
za South Africa
zm Zambia
Twitter and Yahoo Jump In Bed
In an attempt to generate more usage, and cement their respective places in the market, Twitter and Yahoo are getting together for a new user experience. They have announced that Twitter will be integrated to the search providers’ web pages, meaning users who are logged in will have the chance to Tweet from the page.
This is the first time that a search provider as appose to social networking software (or web based application) have offered this feature. This comes in the wake of the Google Buzz launch just a few weeks previous.
When browsing the new feature will allow browsers to clip their Yahoo findings to Twitter and share material with friends. The function will mean that Yahoo will instantly index the Twitter status updates, something Google has already put in place.
The partnership means a share of the link revenues for Twitter, who are desperate to capitalise from the masses of traffic and content they turn over. Until recently there was little form of income for Twitter, who have a book worth of $1 billion yet are still to work out how their business model will generate profits.
How Does SEO Work?
For anyone looking to improve their online sales by way of internet marketing, SEO is the only real sustainable option. But although everyone is talking about SEO, from large corporations down to sole traders, just how does SEO work?
Well, over time search engine providers like Google, Bing and Yahoo have offered a set of organic results. They are called organic because they are natural listings, as appose to the paid for variant (PPC- Pay Per Click). The way in which each engine has decided to display results is different, but they all have specific criteria that makes one site more relevant than another for a particular theme, key phrase or key word.
The one common denominator in the factoring of results is the fact that the webpage that is ultimately displayed needs to be wholely based upon the subject matter. This includes the theme of the whole website, the content on the page and the content on other sites that link in to the page in question. Sound complicated? Well that is just the start….
Other key factors are complex ratios for internal and external links which provides data for the robots on link and page popularity. Anchor text, volume of incoming one way permanent back-links and also page specific one way back-links are all important elements of popularity.
Google alone offers a PageRank as an indicator to visitors how it rates a page, although this is not the be all and end all for rankings. Just one in a thousand factors that makes up SEO, and why it’s so sought after to be able to get to the top positions.
SEO Agencies To Be Looked After By Yahoo
After finally agreeing to the proposed joint venture, the US Justice Department and the EU have given Yahoo and Microsoft the chance to move forward. The plans have been in place since June 2009, when the two companies failed a merger opportunity.
Allowing the two search providers to go ahead with their plans, we will now see the split of responsibilities within the separate operations, ultimately providing two services online with shared overheads.
Microsoft will control the search technology (after the adoptation of Yahoo’s algorythmic search platform). Yahoo will be more sales driven, looking after the PPC efforts and the SEO agencies across the US and rest of the World.
It was never a matter of ‘if’, just ‘when’ the respective government bodies gave the thumbs up on this venture. Looking for reasons to stop Microsoft and Yahoo joining search forces under the competition banner was a false starter.
Google currently dominates the search engine market in Europe and the US, and this will be seen as a healthy move in terms of search competition.
Google Stung By Buzz Feedback
After much conversation about the impact that Google Buzz would have, initial feedback has been solely of Privacy concerns. Testing of new Google services is normally handled in strict fashion, but with just 20,000 people testing the new service, Privacy issues were not recognised before launch.
Google Buzz, a rival to the likes of Facebook and Twitter, is a free to use service that allows GMail (Google Mail) account holders to chat online. Users can post status updates and add multi-media, photo’s and video to the Buzz stream.
The issues over Privacy came about when friends / contacts were automatically added to account holders profiles. This meant that any updates and pictures that were posted were seen by whoever was in the contact list. Google had apparently taken random contacts from email contacts and added them to Buzz friend lists. This resulted in a series of complaints, where email contacts that may have been business or customer related had access to personal updates on Google Buzz.
There is no doubt that Google wants in on the social networking scene. Having to speak to Twitter and Facebook and come to agreements over indexing content must have been pretty painful- they are not used to being in the news unless it’s about their own success. Buzz is meant to take a hefty share of the market and expand the Google content empire, and social networking is perfect for SEO (free content generated by users). Using the underhand techniques of ‘auto-adding’ contacts gives the new system a real injection of inter-linking, and is meant to create a multiplying effect.
It is yet to be seen whether Google will be charged for the Privacy infringement, we will report on this when there is any news in the coming weeks.
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