There will always be many untapped domaining opportunities?

I want to respond to a comment on my last post from Kelly Lieberman.

<snip>there will always be many untapped opportunities out there for domainers that keep their eyes open!</snip>

Is this true? I think so – as long as type-ins continue to be a means of finding information.

Science and technology domain names

Science and technology is moving at a massive rate and new terms and acronyms are constantly being invented as part of this innovation. Older terms can drop out of use completely. Electrophoresis, a method to separate protein in a matrix using an electrical current, evolved into a verb as it became more popular. Nick translation as a method was replaced with other methods and is not referred to anymore.

Science and technology has taken a prominent place in our society and the public and popular press deal with and debate scientific issues all the time. Who would have thought that the term “stem cell” would become so popular? Science and technology will continue to be a fertile area.

Products and services domain names

Products and services are obviously good commercial domain names especially with the marketing money behind them. Generic names describing these should continue to perform well. Domain names reflecting cultural symbols and topics catching the public interest from elections to food safety scares will also continue to do well.

Domain names as information labels

Language evolves to reflect the changes in our society and domains are a reflection of that language evolution. In the end domains are labels that hint at the information contained there and need to reflect the current or future popular interest.

Methods to search for information will change

Will there be a fundamental shift in how searches are done on the web? I think it is inevitable. If you look back over the attempts to make information available on the Internet, there is a remarkable history of innovation.

I am probably dating myself but looking back there was

Archie, considered to be the first Internet search engine
veronica, acronym for “Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Net-wide Index to Computer Archives”
gopher, functioned as an improved form of Anonymous FTP, enhanced with hyperlinking features similar to that of the World Wide Web
jughead, acronym for Jonzy’s Universal Gopher Hierarchy Excavation And Display
wais, often used as a full text search engine for individual gopher servers

It will not surprise me if most of you have never heard of these but they were state of the art in the early 90s when the WWW was an infant.

Domain names are not essential for information retrieval

Domaining depends on the ability to type into the address bar of the browser. Is that a necessity in the future? Maybe not. Domain names are not an essential part of information retrieval to satisfy a query. They do not have to be an essential part of the branding effort either. A brand name or catch phrase can be searched for after being imprinted on the public consciousness through various media.

The answer to that may be to develop the domains to start ranking for commercial terms to retain value. I wonder if that will result in a lot of low quality, overlapping information. Time will tell.

URIs may become hidden

Another speculation is that a website URL may not be returned as the result of a search but a semantic analysis of the available information sources (not descriptions provided by tags). URLs or more precisely URIs may well disappear from the general public view. The inherent value of web real estate will not go away but the variables in play may change.

So right now I think there are plenty of domaining opportunities and those domains should still retain or gain value over time. And thanks to Kelly for opening the door for me to speculate a little about the future of domaining.

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