As you know, I am a pretty big fan of the new Generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs) that are out, and even ones that have not been released to the general public yet. There are quite a few that I like, but then again there are some that I just don’t understand. So far, there has been a good response to them, and there have been some issues. For example, Twitter at first didn’t recognize the new gTLDs, but they later fixed that. What is concerning me, though, is that Gmail, so far, is NOT recognizing any of the new gTLDs that are out. Google Plus does recognize them, though.
When you send an email to someone who uses Gmail, and you include a new gTLD in the email, Google does NOT make it a clickable link. They just don’t recognize these new gTLDs in Gmail. With the .com, .net, .org, .biz, .info, and .tv TLDs, Gmail turns them into clickable links in the email when it was received, whether the sender made the domain name a clickable link or not.
Take a look at the sample email that I sent myself, with a sample list of domains that I know they recognize and a list of domains that they don’t recognize:
Notice in the screen capture that I sent this email to myself, and it was just a list of domain names. Then, I opened it and Gmail automatically made those domains (well only certain ones) clickable links. But the other ones they are NOT making into clickable links. They think they’re just “words” and not actual domain names, apparently.
This concerns me, especially because Gmail is used by so many people now. If you’re going to buy a new gTLD and make it your website, then logically you will be sending email to people with Gmail addresses (or responding to people). If you are going to be using email newsletters and soforth, then there’s a chance that your new gTLD domain name won’t be able to be clicked on.
Here’s the full list of what I tested. In the list, I show which TLDs Gmail recognizes. They don’t recognize the others in the list. This is a list of all of the gTLDs that are currently available for everyone to register (as long as the domain is available for registration and someone hasn’t already purchased it).
billhartzer.com