ICANN is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. The folks who OK URL extensions: .com, .uk, .mobi, etc.
INCANN announced a big change in policy at their June meeting in Paris. Within the next several months extensions will be like vanity plates; any extension that is at least 3 letters will be allowed. You will be seeing major corporations hosting their own root level domain or running a site hosted on TLD (Top Level Domain).
The reason I say major corporations is because the price tag will be huge. Extensions will include .yahoo, .JennyCraig, .PDiddy…So, locally in the future you might see something like http://www.Monterey.Hotels, http://www.Carmel.Jeweler, (No need to click; these aren’t real.)
Big companies are often given more credence and authority by search engines; often adding content with strategic keywords will be indexed within days, so an “authority” site has an easier time ranking and will be quicker to apply for a TLD vanity domain.
Smaller companies really need to consider how moving a site will affect backlinks and natural search performance they already have; inbound links and natural search engine results take years to build. Age is definitely rewarded, online anyway…
