Generic top-level domains (gTLDs) present a good online branding opportunity for Asia's businesses, but regional companies may not understand its value and, in turn, be slow to apply for them, industry insiders noted.

DotAsia Organisation CEO Edmon Chung, for one, said the introduction of new gTLDs beyond the existing 22, which include .com, .org and .net, would offer companies choice as to how and where they want to establish their business identities online.

For Asian businesses, specifically, this is a chance to get the best domain names and be on equal footing with U.S. companies who dominate the .com space, he added in an e-mail. The Hong Kong-based group is the non-profit registry operator for the .asia domain.

Eddie Chau, CEO of Brandtology, an online brand monitoring firm, concurred. He told ZDNet Asia in an e-mail that the new gTLDs will allow Asian organizations to "stand out a lot more" in terms of exclusiveness and their brand image and value, particularly if they are competing against global foreign brands.

Elaborating, the executive said for a brand new company, having its unique gTLD can help establish its URLs. For a company with existing .com domains, it can still deploy new gTLDs instead of acquiring a separate domain to launch new brands or sub-brands, he added.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which regulates the Internet domain name system, had in June this year approved the expansion of the number of gTLDs. By opening up the "right of the dot", organizations can now register customized domain names in any language script, according to a ZDNet Asia report.

Recognizing value of gTLDs
With registration for generic domain names only opening on Jan. 12, 2012, Chung called on companies mulling over the value and returns on investment (ROI) of having a customized gTLD to understand the value of domain names.

Domain names are representative of a brand name, an Internet address and a core search engine optimization (SEO) tool today, he said. For instance, a URL (uniform resource locator) ending with .asia enhances a company's search ranking when users are based in Asia geographically or input keywords such as "shopping in Asia". Simply put, if one has a domain name that more accurately matches the search term entered by a user that Web site automatically ranks higher, the DotAsia CEO explained.

Therefore, whichever way a business wants to strategize with its domain names, whether through .asia or .brand, a new gTLD can help improve its "footprint on the Internet" as well as SEO and brand value, he added.

However, Chung said "low awareness and understanding of domain values" would mean adoption of gTLDs in Asia may be low initially and he cautions that all the best domains could be snapped up before they wake up to the opportunities gTLDs present.

Comparatively, companies in the United States and Europe have grasped the value of maintaining a portfolio of domains to catch more traffic going to their Web sites from across the Web, he noted, likening this online strategy to opening up chain stores in the real world.