CITIC is the first brand owner to transition a main website from a .com (citic.com) to a .brand (limited.citic). It’s a bold step that has been met with mixed reviews to date.
The choice of the .brand domain (limited.citic) is longer than citic.com and it’s possible that shorter, more memorable options such as (ltd.citic or l.citic) may have been better received by industry experts. That said, the .citic platform will provide CITIC the opportunity to further establish their presence beyond China and reinforce their brand, services and products in a meaningful and recognizable way on the Internet. Additionally, the move does not appear to have impacted the company’s SEO rankings.
We expect transitions to .brand domains to increase. Global brands are coming to recognize the power of these new digital marketing platforms, consumer awareness of new gTLDs is growing and search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, Baidu and Yandex are beginning to react to the changes.
CSC’s Global Brand Advisory Team continually monitors these developments and their impact on search and the other key digital channels like email, mobile and social media.
To further help our clients, we will shortly be publishing a New gTLD Utilization Report that reports on the progress and use of the New gTLDs, including the dot brand landscape.