ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the governing body for internet domain names, recently approved the release of generic top level domains (gTLDs) from its current number of 22. Slated to be released in January of 2012, ICANN’s decision will allow the creation of TLDs in any language or script. So how does ICANN’s decision affect SEO? Probably not as much as we might think. Search engines like Google and Bing do not differentiate between a .com and a .net suffix, and certainly do not give a .com any additional ranking power because of it. Where there might be a bit of opportunity would be the use of keywords within the URL itself, however, keyword rich URLs is only one of many organic ranking factors and are less significant than in the past. SEO requires more than just a great domain name and more TLDs doesn’t necessarily equal more rankings.

Most people have a metric that they obsess over. Supermodels watch their weight and baseball pros watch their batting average. Saudi Arabia obsesses over the price of crude. For online marketers, it looks like one particular metric has overtaken all others. That metric is the bounce rate.

I have been in countless meetings, and on numerous calls, where the bounce rate was positioned as the be all and end all of success, the metric that supersedes all others.  In the religion of Web Analytics, everybody seems to worship at the altar of the Bounce Rate. Let’s play devil’s advocate, at least for the next five minutes.

Before diving in any deeper, let’s remind ourselves precisely how the bounce rate is calculated. I go on your site and arrive at a landing page, and instead of going to another page in your site, I leave.  There you go; I have just contributed to the bounce rate. According to most web marketers, your site has failed me. In a tiny way, my interaction will have contributed to a poorer performance. But did I have a horrible time on your site?