By Amy@BubbleJobs
This weekend came the announcement that no one had been expecting – the news that from summer 2014, .london domains would be available to purchase for companies, individuals and organisations based in the capital.
According to various reports, registrations for the new domains will open around spring time, with the domains set to go live a few months later. The news comes just a few months after the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers approved a similar top level .nyc suffix for New York City.
The point of the new .london suffix? According to London Mayor Boris Johnson, it’s to allow “organisations to more closely associate themselves with our great city’s powerful global brand”.
Hmm, so if your business is based in London, should you be getting ready to purchase the .london extension of your existing domain (eg. www.bubble-jobs.london) or should you save your hard earned cash and stick with what you’ve already got?
At the moment, it’s pretty hard to say. Obviously it goes without saying that these new domains are going to be extremely popular to begin with (Selfridges are just one of the brands already raving about the possibility of a .london domain!), but whether they’re actually going to make a difference to a brand’s organic local rankings remains to be seen.
It’ll definitely be interesting to see how Google treats these new domains when it comes to local searches. Would they place a site with a .london extension above another site which doesn’t – and only has a ‘London’ page? Similarly, what about a site which already has the word ‘london’ in its existing domain? Will it still rank this well for London-related searches when the new .london domains are kicking around?
And how will Google to treat the content on these .london domains? Should the content just act as an extension to main .co.uk or .com domain? Or will it need to be 100% unique? If you’re selling products or services, this could turn out to be pretty tricky…
In terms of whether it’s worth registering a new .london domain for your brand, I’d be tempted to say ‘yes’ for a couple of reasons. Firstly, like I’ve just said, there’s no saying how Google’s going to treat these new domains – there’s a chance they might not give them an advantage in the SERPs… but there’s also a chance (and a pretty big one at that!) that they might give them a distinct advantage when it comes to a local search/any local search. And if your business is based in the capital – and offers services exclusively to London residents/businesses, can you really afford to take the risk?
Similarly, as far as I’m aware, anyone can register a .london domain from spring 2014 – so if your brand decides to stick with what you’ve got and ignore these new domains, who’s to say your competitors wouldn’t take advantage of your decision? In theory, they could register your brand with the .london domain and either keep it hostage or post their content and brand messages on the domain – potentially stealing prospective customers from right under your nose. Definitely something to consider…
Thirdly and rather surprisingly, I think Boris Johnson might be right. Thanks to the Olympics’ legacy, London’s definitely got a good vibe going on at the moment – so what’s to say another brand (particularly an international one) wouldn’t be more keen to work with your business is they can see from the start that your business is based in London? Obviously you’d hope they’d figure out your location sooner rather than later anyway, regardless of your domain suffix – but isn’t it about removing any possible hurdle which might get in the way?
Obviously, when it comes to buying a new domain like this, it all comes down to the individual business concerned and what’s right for them at the time. That said, I’d definitely say these new .london domains are definitely worth considering (and carefully) over the next couple of months if your business is based in London and you’re keen to give yourself any advantage over your competitors…
As ever, I’m really keen to hear your thoughts on this one. Are you going to snap up a new .london domain when it becomes available? What do you think the possible SEO implications might be for this kind of domain? Leave me a comment below.
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