New Rules on .xxx TLD and .RU hits 4 million registrations!
.RU Reaches 4 Million Domain Milestone
The Coordination Center for TLD RU/.РФ arrived at a significant milestone – the registration of the 4 millionth .RU domain name.
The 3rd million .RU domain name was registered on the night of September 25, 2010, just two years ago. Also just two years ago on May 13, 2010, .RU got a little friend , IDN TLD .РФ. From that point forward, Russia’s internet started growing at a doubly fast pace, by 1,000 to 1,500 new domain names each day in each domain region.
Andrey Kolesnikov, the CEO of Coordination Center for TLD RU/.РФ, stated that Russia’s internet market is the largest in all of Europe. Additionally, he added that Russia’s internet market has immense potential to grow even further. To date, there are 4,001,632 .RU registered domains.
.AE announces 100,000th domain
The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) in the United Arab Emirates revealed that .AE domain name registrations have reached 100,000.
This is significant milestone for the United Arab Emirates makes it the leader in the Arab Region in regards to the number of domain registrants.
Search.xxx – ICM Registry announces a new search engine
ICM Registry, the registry controller of .xxx, has announced plans to launch a new search engine at Search.xxx, which is devoted to developed .XXX websites and .XXX content. The new search engine is set to launch on 27th of September.
ICM Registry has stated that they are concentrating the bulk of their efforts on providing an excellent user experience with extremely relevant search results. ICM Registry plans to invest in an advertising campaign to market the search engine, which will in turn bring bona fide value to .XXX domains via additional traffic, at no charge to domain owners.
ICM Registry is encouraging website owners to get their site crawled, so that their sites can be indexed and optimized by the .XXX search engine.
Here are some vital rules and guidelines ICM Registry has set for the new search engine:
1. The search engine is designed to only crawl .XXX websites that are fully developed and contain adult entertainment content. It is important that .XXX site owners complete the membership process and ensure they can successfully find their website via their web browser. If the site owner can find their website via their web browser, then the new search engine should have the ability to find it as well.
2. The crawler is only able to crawl .XXX websites. If a .XXX site has content links to other sites in other TLDs, the crawler will stop crawling those links once it reaches a link that does not end with .XXX.
3. .XXX sites that are hosted at parked domain service providers run the risk of not being crawled. If your site is parked, crawling by the new search engine is not guaranteed.
4. .XXX site owners who wish to not be listed on the .XXX search engine can simply opt out by sending an email to ICM Registry.
The new search engine has led to talks that have raised some larger questions in regards to new GTLDs. Many industry insiders are questioning if new GTLD owners should have their own dedicated search engines. That is, is it a good idea for Search.car, Search.web or perhaps Search.soda to exist? Even if it is a good idea, and it were to become a reality, would Google and other search engines index all of these websites, in addition to their internal search engines? Maybe now that Google indexes .xxx websites, this could open a pathway for indexing of dedicated search engines and websites for new GTLDs.
Conference planned for geo TLD applicants
Two notable names in the geodomaining world have joined together to form a new conference. The GEO.FUTR conference, a conference for GeoTLD and Geodomain owners formed by Patrick Carleton and Josh Metnick, will take place sometime in the Fall of 2013.
Carleton, the former executive director of Associated Cities, LLC, a trade group representing geo domain owners; has orchestrated a bevy of geo domain conferences in the past. Metnick, is most known in the geodomaining world as the owner of the website Chicago.com
The conference will feature talks on both geo top level domains and geo domains as a whole. The announcement of the duo’s conference, several weeks before the .city domain name hit’s the web, is perhaps an indicator that the conference’s primary focus will be top level domains, such as .Africa and .nyc.
Attendees that could benefit from the conference includes registeres, Geodomain and GeoTLD investors and owners, hotel, travel and tourism companies, governments, municipalities, advertisers and branded companies with local visibility.