It won’t be long before you start noticing a different kind of domain used for restaurant websites. As of today, November 6, Boston-area eateries can now register for a “.restaurant” domain name. This means, for example, that web addresses like jmcurleyboston.com could become jmcurleyboston.restaurant – or thetiptaproom.com could be thetiptaproom.restaurant.
According to an official source, this makes the restaurant industry the “latest to capitalize on a slew of new domain extensions that are joining .com, .org, .gov and the other extensions we’re used to.”
Jeremiah Johnston, general counsel of domain marketplace Sedo (headquartered in Cambridge), points out that this year, new gTLDs (Generic Top Level Domains), like .restaurant, started joining existing generic gTLDs such as .com, .net and .org. Other examples now include .club, .shop, .trade and .lawyer.
As for Boston restaurants, themselves, Johnston tells BostInno that the new gTLD has a number of advantages – one of which is more web address options. “When a restaurateur comes up with a great, unique name for their business, chances are that a .com domain that matches it exactly would be hard to come by,” he explains. “It’s more than likely that the perfect .com name is already registered to someone else.”
Johnston goes on to point out that there’s now an almost unlimited supply of great new names available for restaurants. “.restaurant is just one example that’s launching this week, but other names, like .bar, that clearly identify what kind of services you offer or where you operate, are already available,” he notes. “If businesses – in this case restaurants – act quickly, they have an opportunity to purchase the perfect domains for their business before others snatch them up.”
This means that new restaurants won’t have to settle for any old website name because their first choice domain wasn’t available.
Johnston also points out that the new gTLD gives participating restaurants an edge in search engine optimization (SEO) “since Google and Bing will be able to use words to the left and right of the ‘dot’ to help improve results,” he adds.
The new .restaurant domain will certainly give Boston bars and restaurants a new online identity. We’ll just have to wait and see how well this new gTLD takes off in the restaurant community here in the Hub.
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