UPDATE: This was a post that I wrote back in February. At the time, Twitter was NOT recognizing the new gTLDs. But, I’m happy to report that it appears that Twitter has fixed the problem that I wrote about.
I noticed today that Twitter is not recognizing the new gTLDs in Tweets. While there are already several new gTLDs that are already available now for anyone to register, and they are getting indexed in Google’s search results already, Twitter has yet to recognize the new gTLDs.
Take a look at the screen capture above. I show two different Tweets that have links in them. The first one was obviously mine, and Twitter is NOT converting those perfectly legitimate URLs into links. But, on the other hand, URL that includes a dot gov or a dot com URL is automatically made into a clickable link. Take a look at the embedded Tweet below:
Have you noticed that Twitter isn't recognizing the new gTLDs as links in Tweets? Like http://www.dot.guru or http://www.dot.photography
— Bill Hartzer (@bhartzer) February 13, 2014
Notice how the URLs are http://www.dot.photography that I bought today, and http://www.dot.guru which resolves to a website. Twitter doesn’t change those URLs into links. If you go to Google, and search for:
site:.photography
site:.guru
You will notice that both .photography sites and .guru sites are already indexed. Some actually have live sites on them already. Yet Twitter has failed to make URLs on the new gTLDs into acceptable links.
If you’re going to use a new gTLD as your website, it’s pretty discouraging that Twitter doesn’t even recognize it as a valid web address. Granted, it could be that Twitter’s back-end has not been programmed to recognize these new gTLDs yet, but it’s not very encouraging. After all, it’s not like the new gTLDs just suddenly popped up out of nowhere. It’s been a while since the gTLDs have been planned.
Now that the new gTLDs are here, Twitter doesn’t even recognize them. Great.
I tested 14 gTLDs whose domains are generally available now to the public and tested them on Twitter:
http://billhartzer.singles
http://billhartzer.ventures
http://billhartzer.bike
http://billhartzer.camera
http://billhartzer.clothing
http://billhartzer.equipment
http://billhartzer.estate
http://billhartzer.gallery
http://billhartzer.graphics
http://billhartzer.guru
http://billhartzer.holdings
http://billhartzer.lighting
http://billhartzer.photography
http://billhartzer.plumbing
So, as of the writing of this post, none of the “available” gTLDs are considered to be links in Twitter. If you were to post the same http://billhartzer.com URL in a Tweet, it would be a clickable link. So why isn’t Twitter recognizing these?
See below, none are clickable links:
So, what does this mean for marketers? Well, even if you aren’t a marketer, then when you add a link to your site and your site is on a new gTLD, then people can’t click to your site. You will get a lot less traffic (if any) from the social media sites like Twitter.
In another post, I tested this same thing on Facebook and on Google Plus and see if those sites are recognizing the gTLDs.