From 1pm, 30 September 2014, ‘second level’ domains like the .co in ‘.co.nz’ and the .org in ‘.org.nz’ will become optional. You’ll be able to get .nz names with them, without them, or both. You may have ‘Preferential Registration Eligibility’. This means you could register or reserve the shorter version of your .nz domain name before it becomes available to anyone else. Find out more.
You can visit www.anyname.co.nz to check the status and availability of your domains. Basically it works like this:
If you own the .co.nz domain, then you have preferential rights to the .nz domain. This is the most common situation for our clients. All we need to do is pre-register your domains (cost is $25/year (plus GST) per domain) and this stops anyone else from getting their mits on it. If you own a different extension to your domain (eg: .net.nz or .org.nz) you have to check the status of the .nz domain at anyname.co.nz. Their might be a conflict process where anyone with a relevant extension can put their case forward to claim the .nz domain. Generally speaking, those with the .co.nz domain will get it but you might as well try.
Come March 2015, the deadline to claim your .nz domain expires and any unclaimed .nz extensions go to the open market. If there’s a domain name you have had your eye on, let us know and we will add it to the list we are keeping. Come March, we’ll try and get as many of the ones on our list as we can automatically (we’ll send you the bill if you’re successful).
Any domain names that haven’t got a .co.nz or similar extension registered, the .nz extension will become available from September 30th on a first in first served basis. Let us know asap if there’s any that you would like us to get for you.
Once you own the .nz extension of your domain (or have bought any others you might like), you get to decide whether or not you want to use it or not. We will be changing this website to www.topcatt.nz for one, but that’s just our preference. We don’t expect it to play an enormous role in SEO (but you never know for sure), but being less to type in, why not! This is also a fantastic opportunity to build a squeeze page or 5 for your keywords. If you don’t yet know what a squeeze page is then you haven’t been watching our blog. Squeeze pages are an excellent way of capturing a page 1 organic listing in Google (or any other search engine) for a keyword. Talk to us now if you would like to improve the visibility of your business – a squeeze page or other SEO technique might be just the thing!