The Internet’s governing body — an organization called ICANN — is considering opening up the door for a whole new wave of domain categories.

According to National Public Radio:

Vast new tracts of the Internet are up for sale as of Thursday. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, known as ICANN, is forging ahead with plans to sell new domain categories despite some vocal opposition from regulators and advertisers…. Currently, there are 22 generic domains like .net or .gov. Under the new program, as many as 1,000 new ones could come to market every year. Applicants must qualify and pass ICANN’s various criminal and other background checks.

In May, ICANN will publish a list of all the proposed domains. One can imagine .food or .hotels making that list. Although, for example, .Nabisco or .Marriott could also appear. Opponents will get 60 days to file objections.

Interactive Marketing Implication:

Search (and therefore search engine marketing) will become more important.

If it’s easier for multiple companies to increasingly use similar domains, then people will increasingly seek to find the correct website via search. For example, if my potato company had the lucrative web address “potatoes.com,” and suddenly my competitors were able to buy “potatoes.food” or “potatoes.potatoes,” my domain alone suddenly wouldn’t quite be so profitable.

This would highlight the need for a committed, sustainable Internet marketing strategy. If folks begin pulling up the wrong potato site, they’ll take to the search engines to find you. It’s a good idea to do everything you can to make sure your company shows up on top of the search results.

Still, except in cases where companies have a general, non-branded web address, this seems unlikely to cause many problems for businesses. Think about it — what percentage of websites do you visit by actually typing in the complete URL? You likely either have the website already bookmarked, or you get there via search engine. The address bars on most web browsers these days double as a search portal anyway. I’ve noticed a tendency to search for a site by its nearly completed web address (e.g. “Masterlink”), which is somehow easier than the (not-so) burdensome effort just typing in the whole thing (“masterlink.com”). Statistics show that this is how many people access websites.

In other words, this won’t significantly change Internet behavior — but it is something to watch. Our Dallas Internet marketing specialists are happy to help sort through these and any other changes and craft a profitable, cutting-edge interactive marketing strategy.