ICANN has a list of banned words that cannot become domains.
With the gTLD program at full steam by ICANN, there is a small detail that needs to be mentioned, for gTLD applicants to take notice.
Once given the right to roll out a particular new gTLD, even after spending $185,000 as application fees alone, new registries must abide to a set of rules – including, the banishment of certain keywords.
The list of reserved words by ICANN is quite lengthy, and includes such obvious entries as “olympic“, “NATO“, “redcross” and “OPEC” and others less obvious ones.
Want to roll out eco.green? No can do. Eco is a reserved word.
How about AU.bank? Impossible. You’d have to go for Australia as “AU” is also reserved.
There are numerous other combinations that would make sense for a gTLD, which are not allowed by ICANN.
The full list can be seen here.
This post is 100% true!
All two-letter .whatever are blocked in new-gTLD. That’s why IG.com can sell for $4.7 million, as such domain will get no negative impact from new-gTLD. I hope seller of MO.com realized that as well and he sold his domain for 7-figure as well.
Interestingly, “icann” is not on the list.
In accordance with Specification 5 of the Registry Agreement, all two-character labels shall be initially reserved, so 2-letter domain names remain reserved.
South – Great observation! 😀
@South, @DomainGang: ICANN is in Top-Level Reserved Names List and is blocked as well. Check section 2.2.1.2 of New gTLD Applicant Guidebook [http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/agb/guidebook-full-04jun12-en.pdf]
That’s interesting Mark about 2-character reserved domains. How about 1-character?
Fizz – One character domains are definitely reserved by the Registry, e.g. .com/.net/.org. PIR actually repossesses all expired two-character .org domains currently (tv.org dropped and was reclaimed.)