April 30, 2014

If someone else already purchased the domain name you wanted, there is new hope for that perfect domain name.  New TLDs are available, and two of them may be of particular use to home health: .AGENCY and .SERVICES.  The TLD is that bit of text after the last dot in your website address.  We are all accustomed to seeing .COM, .NET, and .ORG TLDs on home health and physical therapy website addresses.  This year, a great many more TLDs will become available.  These include .EMAIL, .SOCIAL, .HOUSE, etc.  Outside of .SERVICES, we haven’t found any that we feel offer particular opportunity to physical therapy practices.

Today, .AGENCY TLDs went into general availability.  Their prices across all sellers will average about $25 per year.  That’s about two-thirds more than a good, old-fashioned .COM or .NET domain name.  You can buy .AGENCY domain names now at any registrar or at almost any hosting provider that handles your domain names.

The .SERVICES TLD can be pre-registered now, and will probably become generally available in fall or winter 2014.  If you have been following this, you may have received several offers to purchase these domains, only to find out they are only pre-selling them at exorbitant first-available fees.  It appears that now, the .AGENCY is really available for actual purchase – at prices that have come down out of the stratosphere.  The .AGENCY TLD may present an advantage over the .NET and .INFO TLDs.  When people see .NET and .INFO in print, they have a tendency to type .com out of habit.  The .AGENCY is so unusual; it may grab their attention, be more memorable, and promote better typing of the address when they attempt to visit the website.

TLD stands for Top Level Domain, and refers to the way the internet sorts traffic.