.arab domains in the works

Here we go... work is now underway on getting both Latin- and Arabic-script .arab domains set up, under the auspices of the Bahraini telecoms regulator, and spurred on by the League of Arab States.

Make no mistake – this is big news, and the herald of both massive opportunities and massive headaches for regional marketers.

This is the first we’ve heard of a well-defined effort to get regional domains set up – as opposed to the in-country efforts by both Egypt and the UAE – following internet quasi-regulator Icann’s push to allow non-Latin script top-level domains.

(For those left in the dark by the above, a top-level domain (TLD) is the .com, .net, .ae, .uk, etc, that follows a web address. Previously, thanks to the internet’s US and European routes, TLDs – and the addresses they follow – have had to be in Latin script.

Last year the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) – the body that sets the rules for how the internet works – opened up a system to register non-Latin TLDs, and indeed, brand new TLDs of whatever script, Latin included.

The practical upshot of this is that a sufficiently well-funded and motivated organisation – whether a government department or a private corporation – can apply to set up its own TLD (think .coke, .microsoft, or .arab). We now return you to regular programming.)

“The creation and use of a ‘.arab’ or Arabic equivalent domain will ensure greater regional identity and over time will help to bridge the digital divide by encouraging Arabic content development and ease of navigation for those people who only read and write in Arabic,” said the Bahrain TRA’s ICT manager, Ahmed Al Doseri, in a press release.

Al Doseri chaired the recent meeting of the Arab League steering committee in Damascus, which reported progress on the League’s application for its new Arab domains. The committee will also meet later this month in Egypt, to give an update.

The committee includes members from Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, Syria and Yemen – interesting to see no-one from the UAE or Jordan, possibly the two most internet-aware states in the league, on the committee.

Al Doseri also said Bahrain would soon be getting an Arabic-script .bahrain domain of its own, as, indeed, we would expect most countries in the region to be doing.

We’ve banged on about this before, but agencies and clients – in fact, pretty much every company currently on the web here – need to keep a close eye on these new domains, especially the regional ones like the upcoming .arab TLDs.

Just as, in the early days of the internet, the rush was on for the “good” web addresses – money.com, say, or indeed sex.com – there will, at some point, be a rush for new .arab domains, especially in Arabic script.

Early adopters will get the opportunity to carve out a slice of prime internet real-estate, while late arrivals may end up having to think up vaguely stupid-sounding names (what the hell does “google” mean anyway? It’s not even spelt right), which, while not necessarily a massive handicap, probably won’t help things.

The flip-side of all this is that, at the moment, no-one has any idea which new TLDs will catch on. .arab sounds like a good idea, but sooner or later someone’s going to come out with an Arabic .com.

So, do you register both? Do you keep them as separate domains, do you redirect to one, do you redirect to your Latin address? What about spelling variations? What about all those new country-specific TLDs – do you register your domain on all of them?

Our suggestion – not that anyone’s asking, but hey – would be to sit down NOW, and work out a strategy: pick a standard, simple, Arabic version of your company and/or brand name(s), think about easily-confusable variants and typos, then decide a) which country-specific domains to look at, and b) how far you’re willing to go with the pan-regional TLDs, such as .arab and whatever else comes along.

As the incremental costs for registering new domains is likely to be relatively small, cost shouldn’t be too much of an issue – especially if one’s new domains are set to redirect to one’s current established web address.

But getting in early, with a clear strategy, means first that companies are less likely to miss out on their preferred domains, and second, that they can protect themselves from competitors or cyber-squatters much more effectively.

Expect a lot more news on Arabic TLDs this year; going out on a limb, we predict at least one high-profile launch and big push for an Arabic .com equivalent – possibly by a big player such as a Yahoo!-Maktoob, or a Rotana.