GTLD Applied-For Strings

> This paper uncovers a new phenomenon in web search that we call domain bias — a user’s propensity to believe that a page is more relevant just because it comes from a particular domain. We provide evidence of the existence of domain bias in click activity as well as in human judgments via a comprehensive collection of experiments. We begin by studying the difference between domains that a search engine surfaces and that users click. Surprisingly, we find that despite changes in the overall distribution of surfaced domains, there has not been a comparable shift in the distribution of clicked domains. Users seem to have learned the landscape of the internet and their click behavior has thus become more predictable over time. Next, we run a blind domain test, akin to a Pepsi/Coke taste test, to determine whether domains can shift a user’s opinion of which page is more relevant. We find that domains can actually flip a user’s preference about 25% of the time.

I skimmed the paper, and it looks interesting but not really relevant to this story. They find that swapping the domains webmd.com and genetichealth.com causes people to prefer the result labeled "webmd.com" (with genetichealth.com's content). All this seems to suggest is that WebMD has a reputation for relevant health content, i.e. it's the reputation attached to the domain that matters, not the domain itself. (If it IS the domain itself, that's not established here.) So if WebMD moved to "webmd.health" or just "webmd.", once people got used to the change, it doesn't seem that this would affect the results.

I seriously hope that ICANN blanket-rejects all proposals which include trademarks, on the grounds that they would be of no use to anyone other than the trademark holder.