DENIC, the organisation that manages the de. domain, gave a presentation in Berlin to introduce the CENTR Jamboree, the annual gathering bringing together workgroups for European top-level domains, ccTLDs and associated members.

This year’s Jamboree was particularly important for the .barcelona domain: the team from Accent Obert, which manages the .cat and .barcelona domains, presented its international research project funded by ICANN Grants and putting the .barcelona domain and 10 other geoterritorial domains at the centre of current debate: how does AI affect the online visibility of geoterritorial domains?

The great change in internet searches

The project aims to respond to a question that is causing increasing concern in the sector: in an environment where internet searches are no longer just Google, Bing and DucakDuckGo, but also ChatGPT, Claude, Mistral and other AI systems, are territorial domains still visible?

So far, positioning efforts have focused on traditional search engines. Yet the eruption of language models and generative searches are changing the rules of the game. When somebody asks AI “what’s the best pizzeria in Barcelona?”, do websites with .barcelona domains appear? Are they treated the same as other domain extensions such as .com and .es?

These are the questions that this project aims to address.

How does the research work?

The investigation has two main lines of analysis:

• Assessment of traditional search engines: how geoTLDs are indexed and positioned in conventional search engines.
• Assessment of AI environments: how AI systems treat geoterritorial domains when responding to questions from users.

In addition, all the methodology uses open-source reusable software, meaning that other domains can adapt it and continue the research beyond this project.

The presentation of the CENTR Jamboree was by Beatriz Guzmán and Josep Masoliver, from the Accent Obert team.

Why is it important for you as a .barcelona domain holder?

If you have a .barcelona domain, the results of this research affect you directly. Understanding how search engines and AI treat geoTLDs can help you decide and act in connection to your domain: learning to treat content so that your page is more visible to both traditional search engines and AI models, enabling you to adapt to how users currently conduct searches on the internet.

We will provide updates on the progress of the project. Because the future of the internet is decided every day, and the .barcelona domain is present.