Another potential risk with very specific niche gtlds is that something can come along and change the game. Something that has nothing to do with domain names can still come along and affect the niche extension. The Apple iPhone and its .com button along with how smartphones easily rendered a website on a phone was a big hit to .mobi.
The .menu extension has already been delegated and four companies are vying to run .restaurant. Tech Crunch did a post yesterday which expanded on something I saw for myself while looking up a local Italian restaurant on Google, earlier in the week.
Frederic Lardinois wrote for Tech Crunch:
Here is a small but nifty update to Google Search: if you ask it to find a restaurant menu for you, it will now often just show you the menu right on the search results page. Try this for a search like “show me the menu for fogo de chao” and the menu will be right there.
Now of course this doesn’t mean that these new extensions don’t have other ways to be utilized, but its just a reminder that Google continues to make tweaks and changes that can affect the best laid plans of niche gtlds.
This has nothing to do with gTLDs – or TLDs for that matter. It simply a demonstration of deep search results that bypass the *link* and provide the related info instead. It has raised a lot of eyebrows among small businesses, that have been greatly affected by the invasion of the hyperlocal market by Google.
Well it has something to do with restaurant and menu domains as far as I am concerned, less dependency to go on to a website whenpeople can get what they need at Google. We also don’t know what Google will do in the future regarding these types of verticals.
Raymond, I think you’re presupposing that anyone using the web today would be inclined to directly navigate to a gTLD domain by typing that domain and extension into their address field in the browser. There might be a few, but more likely, most will do a search, and results will be from deep-linked pages or just show the information, as Acro mentioned. Those that do a search are not likely to stop just because they see the entire menu in the search results. They will want to see other things about the restaurant, as well, like location, amenities, reviews, photos of the food, and so forth.
I do believe that search results for gTLDs that match search terms and phrases will be enhanced, going forward, but that will also be predicated upon the domain having content that is pertinent to the extension. In other words, a restaurant with a menu would be highly ranked, while a parking page with junk will be worthless. In this case – to interject a sidebar element here – parking will probably be useless for most gTLDs.
Of course, it’s still pre-game for most of these gTLDs. We are all likely to be surprised by what comes next.
As for me, I’ve only be preordering domains where I actually own the .com counterpart, so I’m pretty much playing it really safe right now and observing the action from the sidelines, to extend our game-day analogy. 😉
>>As for me, I’ve only be preordering domains where I actually own the .com counterpart, so I’m pretty much playing it really safe right now and observing the action from the sidelines<<
I'm using the opposite tactic Danny in that I am standing back and wishing that my .com counterparts – or very similar – are registered by others in as many of the various new gTLDs as possible.
If it plays out the way I'm hoping, this would lead to a few new buyers interested to one day own the .com.
That’s a great strategy, Fizz. Fo’shizzle!
I have not bought any gTLDs in my .com domains that are currently parked or undeveloped; the only new gTLDs I’ve snagged are those that match up with domains that are developed or soon will be, and only in the specific category that matches the content thereon.
The rest is wait and see for me.