ICANN Non-Latin Domain Names and SEO Implications
It was no surprise last week when ICANN announced approval of non-Latin domain names for a number of country codes such as .cn (China), .jp (Japan) and .ru (Russia). This is something ICANN has been planning for some time now. What isn’t clear is how this will affect the world of online marketing. In the Latin language countries it’s likely to have little consequence, as there will be no domain changes. However, there will be significant implications for companies running multi-national online marketing campaigns.
Perhaps the most critical action that any company [operating in these countries with new non-Latin domains] should take is to protect its brand. Our SEO Services team runs a number of large-scale international SEO campaigns and it’s quite common to see malicious online marketers registering domains with our clients’ brand terms.
The pace at which both Google and our clients’ legal departments move is frequently a challenge. Any delay is too much when tens of thousands (and sometimes more) unsuspecting searchers pour into sites that look like our client’s sites, feel like our client’s sites and because they are listed #1 on Google — it’s assumed that they must be our client’s sites!
Protecting the brand is key and when the new domains become available there will likely be a mad dash to register the hottest brand domain names in each of those languages. We are already working with our clients to prepare for this by identifying the brand domains in those languages that we’d like to protect. And of course, the day those domains become available we’ll be part of that mad rush to register those brand terms – in each of those languages.
Actionable Insight #1: Identify the critical brand terms that carry decent search volumes. Translate those terms into the non-Latin languages. Identify when they will become available and register them as soon as they are for sale.
Actionable Insight #2: 301 Redirect your new domains to their corresponding country site for now. In the future, think about putting your in-country site up on that domain. We’ve seen favoritism from Google toward in-country domains when it comes to in-country searches.
But you shouldn’t only be thinking about protecting yourself, I always feel that the best defense is a good offense. Do a search for just about any phrase and you’re likely to see a result where the keyword exists somewhere in the URL. One of the most interesting examples here is searching for “credit cards”.
You’ll find that the first result is almost invariably creditcards.com, which is not to imply that they aren’t relevant, but rather to show how critical having a keyword in your domain name can be – even when you’re competing with behemoths like Visa, Mastercard and Citibank.
The release of these domains represents an opportunity to grab powerful non-brand-keyword-rich domain names. We are working with our international clients to identify non-brand terms that have good search volumes in Japan, China and Russia; and when they become available we’re going to buy those up as fast as we can.
Actionable Insight #3: Develop a list of your largest-potential non-brand terms, translate them into the non-Latin languages being released. Create a list of domain names you’d like to register for each of those keywords in each of those countries. Develop ideas for sites to put on those domains. Domain names like these can be great for creating an industry blog, putting up an informational site with useful content or just 301 redirecting to your main site.
With these new developments from ICANN many search marketers are gearing up to defend their brand and we’re going to be right there next to them. But don’t let your defensive posturing allow you to lose sight of the enormous opportunities created with these newly available non-brand keyword-rich domain names.
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6 comments
recently there has been a lot of buzz about IDNs etc and there are a lot of people that don’t really know anything about them. IDNs have worked and have been available to register since at least 2001. So yea, you missed the boat but hey I’m selling if you run across my whois
rant over i wish you luck with IDNs.
On point number 3 regarding developing lists in various languages, it should be noted that all of the “top” generic idn.com, idn.net, idn.cn, ind .jp etc etc were long ago registered starting back as far as the 2000′ and 2001′. Up until now, all of these International Domain Names have had the “latin” letters behind the dot (.jp. .cn, com etc). The announcement by ICANN was permitting the extensions “after the dot to be used in international scripts”. So the various idn.cn, idn.jp will “alias” to Chinese: .中国 (.cn), Japanese: .日本 ( .jp). The same is proposed for idn.com, idn.net etc. but the timetable has not been announced.
Although IDNs have been around since 2000′, they have never come into mainstream use due to the lack of browser support (IE-7 was the first to fully support IDNs) and that browser was about a year behind the US getting into the Asian market. Even today, still far too many people around the world have non-IDN compliant browsers, but with the publicity that should change over the next year.
The only significant “new” domain name that will be available for registration as a result of the ICANN announcement will be the idn.rf (idn.РФ ) for Russian Federation which are reportedly only available to Russian nationals. Most other “top” generic names, cities and geos have long been registered so there won’t be that opportunity for the top gtlds and cctlds as your article infers.
Thanks for your comments, you both make some valid points. Perhaps I was too specific in my initial post. I’m trying to highlight the general trend of ICANN increasing the possibilities for domain names – and the associated opportunities and challenges for our brand advertisers.
We see this move as ICANN opening up the proverbial floodgates and with the approval of non-Latin domains and the availability of .anything domains, there is a definite trend toward more diversity and availability of domain names.
With this trend we want our clients to be prepared by knowing the brand and non-brand terms that are most important to them so when new domains become available, we’re not stuck trying to figure out what to register.
ICANN is definately opening the floodgates, but the “homeruns” for online presence and branding will be for companies to register (or buy from existing domain holder) the idn.com and/or various cctlds like idn.jp, idn.cn, idn.de etc. In time, these will all alias to idn.idn. A nice article you wrote…forward thinking companies will move quickly to get their international presence established with IDNs.
As Bill mentions .РФ will most likely be introduced in Russia, but across different Arabic speaking countries there are rumours that .emarat (translated) will be launched. In India there will be one top level domain for each of the 11 languages and so on. These local initiatives will make it harder to protect your brand everywhere but local people will be able to use their local language instead of adapting to the existing Latin characters, and that´s a great thing
You made some very important points. I would like to further discuss this with you. Please contact me.
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