Ask.cars

Peter Askew sent this one in, lamenting the use of a non-extistent top level domain. However, it's not so far fetched given the recent news that ICANN approved the use of any combination of letters and numbers for TLDs. This won't go into effect until 2009 so, for now, this remains a Bad URL but I'll have to remember to come back and change my rating once the new TLDs get rolled out (assuming cars.com jumps on this one). Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go out and get some more memory for my digital camera as the forecast calls for a hailstorm of Good and Bad URLs on the horizon.

UPDATE 7/3: My colleague, Dave McAnally, covers the implications of the ICANN ruling for search engine optimization on the Resolution Media blog. Got me thinking about what this means for marketers as it relates to promoting their URLs. Methinks the www will become all important again as we need to reinforce to people that strings of letters and numbers are web addresses. In a world of dot-com, the www became superfluous. In a world of dot-anything, we'll need the dubs to indicate that there is an URL at hand and not just a random dot.