Late last month, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers announced that it would begin issuing internationalized domain names. The change is scheduled to take place on November 16, and experts say that it will have an immediate and widespread impact on every sector of the internet.
Search engine optimization (SEO) professionals in particular will see changes, as the focus of international SEO efforts shifts to natural-language domains and English campaigns restructure themselves. The move from 30-odd possible characters to over 100,000 will require a tremendous investment of time and energy, and some analysts foresee teething troubles with the wide expansion of internet accessibility.
Andy Atkins-Kruger, writing for Search Engine Watch, says that the shift may even signal a move away from hypertext transfer protocol, the current backbone of the internet, which would force search marketers and search engine optimization (SEO) practitioners to completely rebuild their infrastructure and apparatus.
Some analysts speculate that the shift will increase the consumer base available to linguistically-savvy search engine optimization (SEO) professionals, as Russian and Chinese internet users are finally able to browse the internet in their native languages.
