New domains like Shop.mu, Girl.dl may be a distant dream for Indians at a time when GoDaddy offers .LA for Los Angeles in the U.S.
Los Angeles’ businesses and residents are the first in the U.S. to have access to a domain name extension designating their city, .LA.
This means businesses and individuals can take advantage of location-specific Web addresses and a whole new inventory of domain names ending with .LA to represent Los Angeles.
If similar service is available in India, cities like Mumbai and Delhi will have demands for Shop.mu (for shops in Mumbai), Girl.dl (for girls in Delhi), etc. The new names will have more attachments to the city. Plus, website owners, who are not getting a .COM name, can be happy with the city-specific domain.
Meanwhile, total global domain name registrations passed the quarter billion mark in the final quarter of 2012, reaching 252 million, an increase of 26.6 million or 11.8 percent for the year, according to the latest Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief. For the fourth quarter, registrations grew by 6.1 million or 2.5 percent.
Dot LA Marketing and GoDaddy, the Web’s largest platform for small businesses, are offering the names to the public.
Instead of being limited by a .COM, .NET or .ORG domain name, people who want to be identified as being in Los Angeles have a whole new realm of naming possibilities.
“Expanding to the ‘right of the dot’ opens up a huge range of naming options for people in Los Angeles looking to get their ideal Internet name and brand themselves from a location perspective,” said GoDaddy Domains Vice President Rich Merdinger.
98 percent of domain names that aren’t available ending in .COM are available with .LA. In addition to business names, thousands of valuable keyword and short domain names are available right now.
In addition to making .LA domains available on a first-come, first-served basis, GoDaddy is conducting a special entertainment industry auction where domains including “MovieStars.LA,” “Scripts.LA,” “Studios.LA”, and “Producer.LA” are expected to be hotly contested.
.LA is the first Top-Level Domain to be used to designate websites relating to a city (with domain endings like .NYC, .MIAMI and .PARIS to be launched in 2014). The .LA launch is supported by billboards and online advertising in Los Angeles. .LA domains are distributed globally by CentralNic Group under license from Dot LA Marketing.
