So, who’s excited about the imminent top-level domain changes? Anybody? Bueller?
Well, Realtors, for one. Or at least, the National Association of Realtors is. The “top level domains” are the three all important letters that come after the last dot of a website’s internet address. Back when the internet got invented, only six such domains were created — .com, .org, .net, .edu, .gov and .mil. Later, the domains were expanded to give each country its own tag. Websites with with different top level domains can re-use the same word as their main address — thus state.gov takes you to the U.S. Department of State’s website while state.ie (for Ireland) is the home of a music magazine.
Creating more top level domains will allow for lots more short, catchy website addresses, perfect for business cards and QR codes — or at least that’s NAR’s hope. They’ve recently submitted an application with ICANN, the domain name governing body, to get .Realtor and .realestate accepted as top level domains.
The idea, NAR says, is to “make it easier for home buyers, sellers and investors to locate a trusted valued source of real estate information, resources and services online.” But will adding one more domain name to remember really smooths out most people’s search process?
Plenty of people out there don’t know even what the address bar is, instead typing the name of the site, .com and all, into google. (This phenomonon has been noticed for years — suppossedly the top search on yahoo is google.com and vice versa.)
Even when people do know how website addresses work, they often mis-remember the domain name, or simply think that all webistes end in .com. Website address snatchers have taken advatantage of that for years: For over a decade, while whitehouse.gov would take you to a page of official prnouncements from the inhabitant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., whitehouse.com would take you to a porn site, thanks to a clever web site administratior who snatched up the domain during the early days of the world wide web. (Don’t worry, that link’s only to a wikipedia page explaining the history of the controvery.)
Because of embarrassments like the whitehouse.com situation, savy site owners have for years made sure to buy up the same name in as many domains as possible. That way scuzzy campers can’t take advantage by putting up a rival site under the same name on a different domain. Maybe having .realtor and .realestate will just be one more expense for agents looking to maintain their web presence? — Colleen Sullivan
