10 reasons to use a new domain extension for your business

It’s time to stop flooding the internet with skipped vowels and incorrect spellings just to get a short domain name that kind-of fits your company name. Even better, startup founders no longer have to name their companies after the best domain name they can find (it happens!).

New domain extensions, or generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs) – the letters to the right of the dot – have gone on sale over the past few years that greatly increase your choice when it comes to finding the perfect fit for your business.

Here are 10 reasons to think about one of the new extensions the next time you register a domain.

1. Availability: Is www.yourcompanyname.com taken? Use any of the new domain extensions that make the most sense for your business. A photographer can use .photography, a journalist can use .press and a tech company can use a .tech. If you’re looking for a generic domain, you can go for options like  .site and .online
2. Price – A four-letter .com domain that’s not even a real word in the English dictionary will cost you upwards of a few thousand dollars. SEDO currently has ‘vajj’ listed at a buy it now price of $7,500 and a 3 letter ‘qbi’ at $200,000. The same names, or much better names in fact, could be bought on almost every new extension for less than $50 – that’s a significant cost saving.
3. Keeping it meaningful – Matt Schaefer, who runs a tech channel on YouTube with more than 100,000 subscribers, is using www.mattschaefer.tech. When you see the URL, you know you’re not only going to Matt’s site, but also what to expect when you get there. Award-winning Italian startup Horus Technology will be using blind.tech for marketing its wearable device designed to assist the blind and visually-impaired making it another easily-recongizable name. Two Y Combinator alumni from San Francisco — Seth Bannon and Ela Madej, are also looking at using impact.tech as a go-to source for the impact entrepreneurship movement in the tech world.
4. Google doesn’t penalize new domain extensions –  Google, which itself has applied for and owns many new domain extensions like .how, has clearly explained – “our systems treat new gTLDs just like other gTLDs (like .com & .org)”  and even outlines ways of moving your existing website to a new extension without greatly impacting search rankings or history.
5. Nifty names – New domain extensions make it possible to give meaningful and memorable names to your business. Paul Allen used the nifty www.smartcatch.fish for his new business which trains chefs and restaurant staffs and encourages the latest environmental compliance standards. The Microsoft co-founder chose this name despite the domain ‘smartcatch’ being available in .com.
6. Better branding and shorter URLs – You can improve brand recall with a shorter name. For example, anchor.host is featured as the top result for a Google search for ‘anchor host’ and the company, Anchor Hosting, a WordPress hosting and maintenance expert,  has ditched the longer www.anchorhost.com.
7. Companies, celebrities, influencers among others are already using it – If you need some ‘social proof’ before you commit, consider that GM has a new website on generalmotors.green and OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei has just acquired carl.tech which we understand he plans to use for a blog.
8. Getting there before others – The new domain extensions are still in their early days but demand is likely to become greater as time goes on. Getting into the new TLD game now and registering names relevant to your business will keep others from grabbing them later, potentially much to your frustration.
9. Get identified as a local business – Want to maintain a local image as you expand into new areas? Many cities have been registering their own top level domains. If your business has an address in the Big Apple., .nyc is perfect. .berlin, .dubai and .london are just a few of the many geographic domains available.The Eiffel tower for example has moved it’s official page to www.toureiffel.paris.
10. Microsites with impact – Your next marketing campaign’s microsite will seem a lot more polished with its own dedicated domain. Planning a Black Friday sale? Place it at .blackfriday. if your food brand is expanding into coffee, why not use (you guessed it) .coffee?

From the traction new domains have seen since they were released, there’s no doubt that they will have an enormous impact on startups and a variety of other industries as well.