The .allstate Dot
Brand
Allstate
Fire and Casualty Insurance Company is a large insurance group with
a network of 12,000 agents providing a range of products across the
United States, Canada and the UK.
Allstate
intends to launch its own brand domain to be able to use it as a trustworthy
destination for its services. They wish to attain a level of trust possessed
by the .gov and .edu extensions. Further, by using relevant, meaningful
and logical domains, .allstate domains will be highly intuitive and
expand consumer convenience and choice.
Allstate
currently operates a variety of domains such as AllstateAutoInsuranceMiami.com
and AllstateAuto.co.uk. They are planning to launch a brand domain that
will be a trusted source of information about the company's insurance
policies. This will "provide a single, online source identifying
function for its current and future customers around the world, instead
of the current mix-and-match approach that Allstate is forced to resort
to as it expands into different markets."
A further
advantage will lie in minimizing piracy and other malicious activities.
Less than
10,000 domains are envisaged to be planned in year one, and less that
50,000 are envisaged to be operational in year five.
Allstate
believes that a .ALLSTATE gTLD would provide a single, online source
identifying function for its global customers, instead of the current
mix-and-match approach that Allstate is forced to resort to as it
expands into different markets around the world.
Allstate
will begin with a very limited test of the .allstate extension, with
internal use planned by IT and security personnel. Later, they will
"begin evaluating strategies to potentially migrate traffic away
from Allstate's current patchwork network of second-level domain names,
which are registered in a variety of gTLDs and ccTLDs, to .ALLSTATE."
That is,
if each stage of the rollout is successful, the company will consider
shifting content away from existing websites to the new .allstate domain
space (without necessarily discontinuing any previous sites, which may
well operate in parallel).
Recognizing
the potential dynamic evolution of a .ALLSTATE gTLD as a trusted brand
namespace, Allstate Fire and Casualty Insurance Company, ("AFCIC")
is filing this application to bring the .ALLSTATE gTLD to the Internet.
...with the goal of advancing Allstate's business interests and ability
to effectively compete globally.
Allstate
plans to proceed carefully with the rollout of their dot brand domains.
In particular, they will observe what the other 600 plus brand domain
owners do with their new domain strings, and likely use that knowledge
to influence their own plans.
AFCIC
will be analyzing and evaluating other .BRAND gTLD applications as
well as general market adoption to determine meaningful use case options
to most effectively serve and enhance Allstate's online strategy as
a leading insurance provider with operations in a variety of segments.
The company
will begin planning their new dot brand websites and evaluating the
possibility of migrating content to them. And, moving content permanently
over to the new domain space is specifically not ruled out.
Depending
upon the analysis of the evaluations undertaken in Stage Two, AFCIC
may begin to implement the permanent migration of Internet traffic
away from the gTLDs in which Allstate's domain names are currently
registered, and toward the new gTLD... The dates of such expansion
are subject to change depending upon business, strategic, and industry
factors at the time.
Allstate
believes that their new domain string provides a great opportunity for
innovation and relationship building with consumers.
Allstate
will proceed very cautiously, saying "Allstate plans to start using
these domain names primarily as redirects to existing .COM domains."
 Geographic
Dot Brands
The Applicant
is very aware that significant benefits may be possible for consumers
by utilizing country and territory identifiers left of the dot in .allstate
domain names. At the same time, the company is also very aware that
the same country identifiers are very important to the national interests
of the respective governments concerned.
Allstate
will therefore initially reserve the appropriate country and territory
names at the second level as described by internationally recognized
lists in the New gTLD Applicant Guidebook, for example the geographical
names in the ISO 3166-1 list.
Allstate
points out that it currently uses geographic terms in its current conventional
domain space to provide intuitive navigation to consumers. This assists
with local navigation and is demonstrably in the public interest. Hence,
the company intends to seek the appropriate approvals to be able to
use country names in the .allstate TLD. The Applicant is interested
in working with other new gTLD Registry Operators to achieve this aim.
This
use of geographical identifiers to the left of the gTLD and as part
of the domain name itself is believed to have a direct and material
impact on search engine algorithms and their corresponding query results.
In addition, such naming conventions are intuitive and practiced by
direct navigation Internet users...
Allstate
wishes to have the option to use geographical identifiers in a fair
and non-misleading manner. It points out that its dot brand application
would fully comply with World Intellectual Property Organization prohibitions
such as "false descriptions of the geographical source of goods".
Possible .allstate
Brand Domains
Insurance.allstate
Home.allstate
Life.allstate
California.allstate
MyPolicy.allstate
Investors.allstate
Info.allstate
Notes
Brand
names mentioned on this site are registered trademarks or trademarks
of their respective corporations. This site claims no association
with or endorsement by any of these corporations and their marks are
mentioned only to illustrate opinion presented in the public interest.
All quotations
on this page are from the respective companies' official ICANN brand
TLD applications unless otherwise stated.
Many possible
theoretical dot brands are mentioned (in English). There are also countless
possibilities in other languages. This has significant potential value
for international navigation.
This site
is focused on reporting the strategic impact of the brand domains on
internet communication, competition and commerce, and some comment is
speculative.
It is not
a comprehensive overview of what some of the world's largest corporations
have chosen to reveal about their plans for the implementation of their
proprietary domain strings.
ICANN is
particularly concerned with the technical, financial, security and legal
issues associated with the new TLDs. These issues are beyond the scope
of this website.
For a comprehensive
overview of the brand domains and their impact on the web, refer to
ICANN's website and the individual applications (large parts of which
are publicly published).
If you
have a particular interest in an individual company, the public aspects
of their applications are available for download via these ICANN links:
You can also search a complete list of applicants there.
ICANN
new gTLD applications
ICANN
official website
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