How impressed would you be, if you were able to setup a website for a client (call her Jane Smith) and tell her that the domain could be something along the lines of “www.jane.smith” or “www.janesmith.realestate”? No, you’re eyes aren’t messing with you and no, I didn’t forget to add a dot com or dot net after that. That is the whole domain. This is something that could be happening as soon as next year. Do you smell the branding and keyword opportunities on this one?

Check out this quick little snippet over at The Guardian in the UK and jump back here when you’re done.

The Skinny

Ok you read it right? OK good, let’s keep going. The rest of you go read it and quit trying to take shortcuts. Sheesh…

In a nutshell, this kind of change in domain naming would definitely open up all kinds of new SEO factors and influences on and off your site. However, the price to make this happen is a bit steep ($100k), and technically your client could only apply for the domain and hope it is approved, instead of just going out and buying a standard domain for under $10 a year and being done with that step of the site in a matter of minutes.

Oh, and then there’s the whole issue of how the search engines algo’s will treat this lack of TLD’s (com, net, org, info, etc) and what they will have to do to accommodate the limited number of people who start doing this new domain name setup. My guess is that Google will adopt first, followed by Ask and Yahoo trying to beat each other to the gate, and Microsoft will deny it’s very existence, while their CEO Steve Ballmer throws a chair at something in the room and vows to kill the people who did this domain nonsense. Or something to that extent anyways…

The Best Case Scenario

The first 5 people that actually plunk down this kind of money are gonna be rich and ready for failure. They’re gonna be more obsessed with the “first kid on the block” status, and will definitely tie in a flood of traditional marketing blitzes (TV and print) directing people to this address. They will find out for themselves (and for our own interest as well) how well people responded to their funky domain name and if there is a ROI for this whole thing.

Word will travel and before you know it, a sector of business owners will be insisting on following suit and wanting this whole new branding tool. Hopefully prices will drop before I die.

Worst Case Scenario

There’s 5 people with stupid domain names kicking themselves in the ass for days to come.

It’s the price of this is what could zap all the sexy right out of this whole thing. This really is a stiff arm to private site owners and small businesses alike. We can’t afford this type of thing, although we know it would be cool to see it on our business cards and would totally make us the life of some pretend party we would have in our heads honoring our uber-coolness. But reality slaps us in the face and we realize all we can afford are regular domains. At least we can keep trying to pimp our keyworded “subdomains” and “directories”…

That said, there’s also the issue of people’s reluctance in going with something new and unknown. Kinda like all these .info and .biz names. Not that there’s anything wrong with them, they just don’t have the trust factor and familiarity that we’re used to.

Conclusion

This could be a whole new element for both on and off site optimizations. Or, this could be one of the best internet blunders of 2008. Either way, I can’t wait to see.