Good domain names will be useless because.

Let's look into the future

[walkman]

Let's think of why good domain names might be useless in 5-10-20 years.

1. Old AOL like keywords?
2. Google or whatever comes after it will make them useless?
3. Recommendations by friends, search history, buzz etc will replace serps.?

what else can you think?

[bill]

ICANN's .anything strategy will make so many TLD possibilities available that it will be pointless for trademark holders to keep buying.

[walkman]

The biggest money is not being spent by TM holders in my opinion. Will you click on genericterm.za or genericterm.com?

The .pro .travel .tel etc did nothing to the good .com-s

Bill I was talking about category changer type of domains

[kaled]

Memorable domain names will continue to have a place for use in television, radio and (dare I say it) magazine advertising. Also, the enforcement of trademark rights will always provide some assurance that a website is genuine provided it has one of the common suffixes.

Kaled.

[jmccormac]

Wide ranging geo domains will be useless because search engine algorithms will have evolved to accurately geographically target the user.

Regards...jmcc

[jmccormac]

ICANN's happy-clappy .anything strategy gets hit upside the head with the 2 by 4 of reality (A LART for ICANN). Most .anything TLDs fail and there is an elimination of ICANN.

Regards...jmcc

[man in poland]

Search engines will stop automatically giving a huge boost to exact-match generic names

[dailypress]

nothings going to beat .com

[Webwork]

Good domain names will be useless because . . . the world will come to an end in 2012 . . or 2013 . . or maybe 2,000,000,012 . . but what's a few decimal places? :P

[dailypress]

not sure what you mean by good domain names. Does Good meain short and easy to brand or does it mean Good keywords? im assuming you mean good kweywords so heres my answer:

1.search engines will be default landing page
2.users wont type in keywords+.com in URL as much because of the so many parking page they have already experienced + all the new extensions
3.branding is now key VS just having a good keyword in domain
4.search engines put less emphasis on domain name and now focus on content and backlinks

[HuskyPup]

nothings going to beat .com

Try searching non-US/UK/English language search engines and see which extensions are the most popular.

[dailypress]

Correct, but considering Country GDP, Country Use of Internet, Population, Adwords Competition for specific country I think US ranks #1.

Im not trying to take sides, and considering I own several non-.com's I wish I believed .com didnt rank #1.

Just my personal thought!

Heck, I hope .asia ranks #1 since I spent the most money for domains with this TLD.

[vordmeister]

Good domain names will be useless because....
They are too expensive.

The fabulous domain names in my field were all picked up in the 1990s, and none of them have been used for anything other than possibly making money from type-in traffic.

Domain names help a little in ranking, but not nearly so much as links from other sites. Memorable brands are surely the things you use for domain names these days.

[Simsi]

ICANN's .anything strategy will make so many TLD possibilities available that it will be pointless for trademark holders to keep buying.

At present, Google puts emphasis on domain extensions that match up geographically to a target user's query. For example, it's notoriously hard to get anything other than .com, .net, org and .co.uk (and .uk derivatives) to rank in Google.co.uk.

ccTLD's like ".tv", ".cc" and even ".eu" require a ton of backlinks and/or massive popularity to even get close to a good ranking on any competitive terms.

Until Google changes policy, I'm of the opinion that ".anything" names will be primarily useful for branding excercises and only useful in gaining natural search traffic for very popular sites.

So yes, it will be pointless for TM holders to keep buying, but as much because they won't be a vehicle for traffic (at least in the foreseeable future) as for TM protection.

[maximillianos]

We have a .tv domain that does quite well for itself. I don't think the extension matters much to G. It is more the popularity of the site.

[HuskyPup]

We have a .tv domain that does quite well for itself.

Do you use it for a tv station or a regular domain?

I don't think the extension matters much to G.

It definitely does in the non-Google.com serps. I have a lot of experience in using co.in/.co.uk/.de regions and these extensions dominate their local Google serps.