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Have you ever gotten something new that needed assembly - a TV stand for example, or a new grill - and when you try to read the directions to begin putting it together, your anticipation turns to frustration as you realize that you don't understand a single word? The manufacturer didn't package the proper language directions, and you're stuck with a mess.

It is difficult to navigate something in a language that you don't speak or read. This is the problem that non-English speaking web surfers have been facing for years. The inability of users in many nations to be able to effectively navigate the Internet is hindering web development, particularly in Asia, and is having a negative impact on the developing economies. How often would you use direct navigation if you had to type Chinese or Russian characters?

Forcing people to surf in foreign languages and scripts also leaves many of the Internet's least-savvy users exposed to phishing scams - particularly with Chinese and Japanese, where there are often several ways of transliterating words into Pinyin or Romaji. There are many opportunities for would-be scammers to deliberately confuse people. If you have concerns about phishing, can you even begin to imagine the problems if you were forced to navigate in Chinese?

Many people have focused their efforts on the idea of local-language navigation, and it is abundantly clear to anyone who has applied objective analysis to the problem that nearly all cultural groups will seek to gain access to culturally relevant and linguistically compatible web content. Even the US has its own distinct cultures.

This basic fact provides both huge threats and huge opportunities for any company involved in regional marketing. Those who fail to anticipate market trends and capitalize on them could suffer a significant competitive disadvantage. Once browser support for local language domains (also known as Internationalized Domain Names, or IDNs) is clearly established, which it will be in the coming months, there will be a sea of change - not only in the way people browse, but also in the way web content is presented and advertised.

Already, there are huge volumes of Internet content, up to 10 billion pages in Chinese according to some recent estimates. The vast majority of this content will be converted in a very short space of time. Chinese and Arabic companies have already demonstrated their ability to clone and convert their website to local language URLs. In China, it anticipated that this process will be essentially complete within two years. This conversion will be greatly spurred by the decision to host the 2008 Olympics official website on an Internationalized Domain Name.

From an SEO perspective, it very important that the terms used in the URL are in the same scripts as the terms used for search. Research has clearly shown that people almost always search in their own language, even when they are reasonably competent in English, as it offers the best user experience. After all, the material they will be looking for will be in their local languages, so searching in English will not turn up relevant material, even if they were looking for it.

This is an issue that was discussed in a recent interview between Ron Jackson, publisher of DNJournal.com, and Monte Cahn, CEO of Moniker.

"I am a great believer in common sense and to me it's a very simple question. If you speak a different language than English, what would you prefer to surf in?" asked Jackson.

"Now, I am not up on all the technical hurdles that need to be gotten over. I understand there might be a few of those, but you know it is going to be done. So, it is just common sense to me that there is going to be a lot of growth there...."

Monte Cahn has recently upgraded the Moniker.com site to be fully IDN compatible, making it, along with Domainsite.com and Dynadot.com, an ideal place to secure your domains.

How do Local Character Domains Actually Work?

ASCII domains (domains containing only the letters a-z, the numbers 0-9 and the hyphen) have been the Internet standard for over a decade now, a system that works fine for English speakers, as well as speakers of many Latin-based languages. However, since the world is made up of more than just English-speaking people (by some accounts, about 75% of the world's population does not speak English), there are many who would contend that the current ASCII standard is flawed. The emergence of local language domains or IDNs marks an important step forward in mending this flaw.

Without getting overly technical, Internationalized Domain Names, which have been in development for about a decade, work by mapping an ASCII code string (called punycode) to a Unicode representation of a language script, such as Cryllic, Chinese, or Japanese, to name a few. The challenge has been to allow the DNS, with its restricted character set, to accept addresses that are meaningful to web surfers.

What is intuitive for many human beings around the world would be a nightmare for those trying to run a stable DNS. The answer has been to encode the thousands of characters that people want to use and which have now been standardized as Unicode, into a format which the computers that resolve browser queries can understand. The encoding used is called punycode, which is comprised of a unique string of ASCII characters starting with xn--and which is fully compatible with the DNS.

With browsers like Firefox, Opera, Safari and the newly-released Internet Explorer 7, these punycode strings work behind the scenes, so that when someone types in a Cryllic domain, all they see is the domain in their native language. These latest-level browsers will solve the problems associated with browsing. However, there is still going to be a short-term gap with other applications, such as email and hyperlinks in Office type applications. Apple has more or less resolved these problems, but Microsoft users will not get a seamless solution until they have installed Windows Vista in combination with Microsoft Office 2007.

There is also going to be a bit of a delay before the top level extensions are accepted by the DNS in punycode, enabling the entire URL string to be comprised of local language characters. This, however, is the least challenging problem for Asian users. As most Asian users will only ever type dot com or their own ccTLD, most are completely comfortable with inputting an ASCII extension. Dot com is automatically appended in many instances.

It may seem a bit confusing initially, but it is actually a very intuitive. As Jackson said, it is actually a common-sense approach to domain globalization. If you become involved with IDNs, the important thing to bear in mind is the experience of those surfing the Internet. This is not always easy, as they will have platforms and keyboards that may be configured quite differently to your own.

What Do Local Language Domains Mean to Me?

From a domain investing perspective, local language domains offer both new and seasoned domainers alike a rare and outstanding opportunity: the chance to take part in an emerging market from nearly the ground floor.

In many ways, local language domain investing is a parallel to the "ASCII.com Bonanza" that happened just over a decade or so ago, yet now domainers have the luxury of hindsight and the ability to learn from the past. Many of the mistakes and pitfalls of the dot com business boom and bust can be avoided, while investment in domains in various languages can pay off big to domainers, small business owners and companies alike, who may also share in the success of the established brands such as dot com and dot net.

While it is true that almost all of the top premium generic terms in most of the major languages are already registered, the young aftermarket affords domainers real opportunities to grab some amazing domains at unbelievably low prices.

Not surprisingly, many seasoned domainers and newcomers to domaining have been apprehensive about investing in languages they cannot understand, and markets with which they are unfamiliar. This is where the true benefits of bulletin board forums come into play. Two such prominent forums exist today, and serve a similar underlying purpose, but with different approaches.

IDNForums.com is an English-speaking forum run by Craig Nine, an SEO expert living in Japan who goes by the forum nickname "Olney."

"I started IDNForums because there was a clear misunderstanding of the IDN market," Nine said. "Instead of actually doing research, most just assumed. Technology never stands still."

Searching IDNF.com provides a comprehensive archive of the how IDNers cracked the basic problems of identifying valuable terms, registering them and working out how to monetize them.

DNLocal.com is a premier International forum, offering fully-moderated multilingual discussions and resources. Its founders include Gary Males and David Wrixon, two prominent domain investors, widely known by their online personas Alpha and Rubber Duck. The management team behind DNLocal.com believes, first and foremost, that the success to development and monetizing native language domain names will be in bringing together native, local-language speaking domainers of all countries and providing a platform for discussion and trade.

Researching and investing in local language domain names is not dissimilar to researching English names, as all the same tools exist, such as Overture and Google Trends. It should also be noted that translation resources on the Internet have come a long way in the last few years. DNLocal.com boasts a comprehensive set of free research tools including an advanced software platform built on the foundations of multi-lingual discussion areas.

Domainers and business owners are at a truly unique point in history. While the old adage that "history repeats itself" may hold true, it is rare to not only be a part of that repetition, but to recognize it and capitalize on it. A small number of local language domain pioneers have done just that, and have been kind enough to share their advice and expertise on the new gold rush.

Make no mistake, this plane is on the runway and is about to take to the skies. A critical mass of browser installation will be achieved within the next few months, and there will be spontaneous conversion of websites to the new style addresses. IDN may not have huge vested interests trying to push sales, but they will not need it. They have the political support of the governments of some very powerful nations, and they will have the spontaneous acceptance of their people. This is the no-brainer to beat all no-brainers: the acceptance of IDN will be spontaneous and the prices in the after market will quickly reflect its success. Do not fail to secure your piece of the action in what is domaining's final frontier.

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