Gandi Bar - ICANN

Expert SEOs give their opinion on Liberalisation

Joe — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 12:37:00 +0100

Looks like our ICANN report has generated quite a bit of buzz. We've been covered in hundreds of online publications in 10+ different languages all over the world (summary will follow towards the end of the week).

But it seems we've hit a rich vein of SEO implications and generated a bit of buzz in that community. I've just come across this blog summarising the view of many of the SEO big boys. http://www.cornwallseo.com/search/2009/06/16/what-is-internet-liberalisation-and-why-should-you-care/

Interesting stuff and some good issues raised.

Jeff Behrendt says "The only clear winner of the proposed new TLDs is ICANN - at $185K per application, that’s a gravy train they are going to want to ride for many years."

That may be a little unfair. The fee is partly in place to make sure that ICANN can provide a good oversight to new extensions being created and protect trademark holders and general internet users from people setting up dodgy extensions or without the technical competency to run them. They've said this may come down (or up) as they get into the process. The fee should be high to ensure a higher quality of registry. This could be the beginning of the internet name space clear up, with higher standards leading to fewer squatted, speculative or advertising domains.

Michael Gray says - "In most cases opening the web up with more TLD’s is just going to create confusion for consumers". A point also made by Patrick Altoft about consumer confusion.

Well that seems to be what our consumers have said in our survey, so they agree. Though this liberalisation does open up the opportunity for specific TLDs and therefore potentially more simplicity and order. Michael's example of .movie is precisely along these lines, why have spiderman3themoive.com when you can have spiderman3.movie. The film industry could create this extension and protect its use solely for films. I think consumers could get used to that, and it will make more logical sense. More literal meaning to the name space. Roll on the sematic web. Tim Berners-Lee would be so proud

Hugo Guzman talks about the importance to big business - "The liberalization of domain extensions is already grabbing the attention of Fortune 500 companies".

This was supported by our research too. Still 2/3 were unaware this was happening, but those that did know were both excited and afraid of it, depending on which department you spoke to (e.g. excited = marketing, afraid = legal). Owning .brand could allow you to more effectively manage your brand as you create the association with customers that only sites on .brand are really yours. Though Steve Russell is right, this will cost a lot more than the $185k setup fee.

Anyway, food for thought, and thanks guys for your views.

How the domain name industry works - part 1

Joe — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 12:40:00 +0100

Registry, Registrar, Registrant, (Registratum, Registrata, Registrunt). Ok, so the last 3 are made up words, and the domain name industry wasn't really founded in ancient Rome nor part of your everyday Latin dialect, but what do the first three words actually mean and how does the domain name industry work? We've been working in the industry for years, so we have a pretty good idea. But we can also understand why all this really can just sound like ancient Greek to many people and not mean a thing. So in the spirit of lifting the lid and keeping things honest (as Gandi likes to do), we thought we'd give you a quick overview of what it all means.

Who's who in the domain name world?
Which one are you? Well you're the registrant, the purchaser of domain names and the last link in the chain that runs from ICANN at the top to you at the bottom. But there are several layers it passes through to get to you. Let's take a look.

ICANN - Top Dog

Let's start with the big dog itself ICANN. ICANN is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a body in charge of managing the domain name space. In its own words "ICANN was formed in 1998. It is a not-for-profit public-benefit corporation with participants from all over the world dedicated to keeping the Internet secure, stable and interoperable. It promotes competition and develops policy on the Internet’s unique identifiers." It loosely the gTLD registries (see below), and sets policy around new domain extensions. Generally its a good guy, and the last word on domain disputes, though it is sometimes lofty, intellectual and bureaucratic (not that those are all bad things, an organisation like that needs to be careful).

Registries - They're Wholesalers Only

The registries are the managers of the TLDs (Top level domains), either gTLDs (generic, like .com), or ccTLD (country code, e.g. .uk, or .fr). When you buy a domain.com it is recorded in the registry's database and that is the ultimate record of your ownership of the domain.

The TLDs are created by ICANN and the rights to manage them are tendered to commercial companies in the case of gTLDs (e.g. .com is managed by Verisign), or for ccTLDs given to the national governments who in turn assign/tender their management to other organisations (e.g. Nominet in the UK for .uk, or Afnic in France for .fr).

But the registries generally don't sell direct to customers (or can't in some cases), so instead they sell domains wholesale to the registrars.

Registrars - They Sell You Domains Direct

Here's Gandi. Hurray! The Registrars are the commercial companies that sell one or more domain name extensions direct to you and me (or through resellers - see below). The top tier of these are ICANN accredited which is a greater 'seal of approval', but nowadays there are so many this doesn't necessarily mean much. (Gandi was one of the first to be accredited in 1999).

Registrars interface directly with one or more registries, they manage your details and billing relationship. They represent your interest at the registry and will usually be the first port of call for domain disputes. So they are important to you, particularly their service and policy towards disputes. Know your registry!! Which brings us to Resellers.

Resellers - They Sell on Registrars Domains

Resellers look like registrars, but they aren't. They are commercial companies selling domain names, but they don't have direct relationships with the registries, but instead use the technology of another registrar to manage the domain names. This means if your domain provider is a reseller, it is using another registrar, and you may not know who that is. Many domain companies are registrars for some domains, and resellers for others. Interestingly in the UK, most of the big domain companies are not registrars for the gTLDs, e.g. .com, .net, etc., instead they use the technology of other companies. This can be problem when it comes to registrar behaviour or disputes (more next time).

Gandi is a registrar for all its domains, and there are some reseller companies that use Gandi as their registrar.

You
It's you! Hurray!! You may be a company, an individual, an organisation, a ghost (well maybe not a ghost), but you are the purchaser of the domain name. You buy it from either a registrar (like Gandi) or a reseller. You should be the ultimate owner of the domain (you are with Gandi), though you should check the policies of your domain company to make sure they are not taking the ownership themselves and leasing it to you. You manage your domain via your registrar/reseller and they manage the records of your domain in the registry or registries (if you have lots).

So there you have it! Now you can entertain all your friends at dinner parties with your extensive knowledge of how the domain name industry works. Or hope that you get onto "Who wants to be a millionaire" and the last question is:

"In the domain name industry, the manager of the .com domain extension is know as":

a) Registrant
b) Registrar
c) Registry
d) Regicide....

(the answer is (c), (d) is about killing kings or something). Good luck!

UK government theatens domain name industry, 'Get your house in order or we'll step in and take over'!

Wendy — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 16:45:00 +0000

This was my first Nominet conference and to be honest I thought it would be quite a dry, corporate affair however I was in for a surprise!

Much like the Internet as a whole, governance of TLD's (top level domains) and ccTLD's(country specific) has grown organically and varies from country to country. To-date the UK and the US governments have taken a non-interventionist approach to governance. The US have taken a totally freemarket approach and gave the right to manage .com to Verisign who run the registry as a profitable and commercial business. Nominet run the .UK registry theoretically as a not for profit business however the fact they made £25 million profit this year has raised questions among it's membership and the government.

We walked into the conference unaware that Nominet was under scrutiny by the government induced by board member in fighting, accusations of mismanagement and conflicts of interest. More controversially BERR (government Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform) has serious concerns that Nominet are not looking after the interests of the wider group of stakeholders in the domain industry specifically businesses and the general public in addition to it's existing responsibility to the registrar members.

David Hendon, director of business relations at BERR said 'Nominet and the domain industry need to take more heed of the government agenda on phishing, spam and "bad content". He read out a statement at the conference which to paraphrase sent the message, 'Nominet and it's membership need to get their house in order and self regulate to the government's satisfaction or it would strongly intervene'.

I asked David 'You've effectively made a threat telling us to get our house in order, we need to fill a gap, what are your expectations?'. His reply was essentially, 'I don't know but I'll know if it's right when I see it!' Not to misrepresent Mr Hendon, it was a considered and measured response 'I don't believe the government should tell you what to do as we are not experts in these matters, you all are, you should agree a course of action amongst yourselves with Nominet as the spokesperson and propose a solution around governance and regulation back to us' he also cautioned us that we only had a year to resolve this matter and the response needed to be suitable as deemed by his dept or else ....?

There was a range of responses to the BERR statement from the members ranging from the purist 'leave us alone, the internet should never be regulated in at all', to 'how dare they, it's the government behaving like big brother' and from some of the larger registrars 'let's work it out with Nominet and propose a solution'.

Our view at Gandi is that putting aside our own commercial self interests, registrars have a moral responsibility to business and the general public to keep as much 'Internet real estate' as possible free for genuine use and we take a strong stand against, squatting, spamming, over dominance of advertising and abuse of secondary markets through extortion and touting. As many of you know we also believe your domain name, like your home, is your property (given you're not a squatter) and you should not be restricted in managing it in any way. We certainly won't suddenly stick an advertising hoarding on your home just because you're not living in it at the moment! We believe the industry is grown up enough to regulate itself given we take the time to debate strongly, talk to each other and Nominet and propose an effective solution to the UK government.

If the UK take a lead worldwide in self regulation of the domain name industry will other countries follow? The problems experienced by consumers and businesses with .uk are reflected ten-fold for .com and other free market TLD's.

What do you think?

There were many other topics debated at the conference, the role of secondary markets, trust online, child protection, phishing, parked sites etc but more in future blogs ...

ICANN - domain name extension liberalisation - who benefits?

Joe — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 15:04:00 +0000

Some of you may have seen earlier in the year that ICANN (the body in charge of regulating the domain name space) announced that it was going to liberalise the market for domain name extensions, e.g. the bit that follows the last '.' in a name, .com, .net., .co.uk, .eu, etc.

What this means is that in theory anyone can apply to become a registry in their own right, and get .theirname so that you can buy domain names from them and get yourname.theirname. ICANN have now announced that the 'evaluation' process for new extensions will be costly, $185,000. Well costly for you and me, but perhaps not for funds or speculators.

But what is point in all this? Does it matter? Should we care?

The justification for doing it is that the internet is growing, more people are coming online, it allows more choice, blah, blah, blah. Which has some truth to it. But in some ways there is already an infinite number of domain names available across each of the roughly 280 existing TLDs (from .ac -> .zw - there should be a catchy alphabet song for them!).

But what does it mean for you, the customer? Well, it does mean you can get more choice. You will be able to buy yourdomain.something. Whether this helps is a different matter. Many of these new extensions will be quite specific, which may help, e.g. myplace.restaurant, or myhouse.london, but it may just create more and more confusion that your chosen name can have so many different extensions, which one is really you?

One result of this will probably be that more and more people will want to authenticate that their domain name, whatever unusual form it takes, can be explicitly linked to them. The most common way to do this at the moment it through SSL certificates, where a third party will guarantee that the domain is owned by a particular individual/company, and that you are browsing on that site in a secure way. So this is something to think about and watch out for...

There is one group of people that will undoubtedly benefit from this liberalisation and that is the spammers, advertisers and squatters.

In the old days if you wanted to protect your brand you could buy all 280 extensions. No longer. With a potentially limitless number of extensions, there is no way that you can get yourbrand.allofthem, so even the most well protected global brands may find a few more lawsuits on the horizon. The beneficiaries of this will be the squatters and advertisers who will use establishedbrand.newtld as an advertising site, or domain auction target (buy this one back, for $xxx).

And then there will be the increased volume of ad sites, just showing endless streams of ad feeds on domain names with no real purpose except to make money for their owner. I always think about this in terms of domain names as property: if the best properties in your town (domains on your tld) were closed down and became advertising bill boards, would you stand for this as a resident? This is exactly what is happening online. Most of the best names/words are turning into bill boards, and it will only continue unless there is a regulatory change to stop or limit it.

So there you have it, the change is coming, the benefits are unclear. But one thing that is clear is that unless ICANN take more of a role in setting and enforcing codes of content for domain ownership/usage, we may find as customers we are browsing in a larger and more polluted domain space.

What do you think?