It isn't breaking news, but it is important news. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which oversees the Internet's naming and numbering systems, opened registration today for non-Latin-character domain names through its ccTLD Fast Track Process.
It will most definitely make the global SEO world more complex, but it will also be amazingly impactful for foreign marketers who want to use native languages for their URLs.
You no longer need to have an english domain of www.lunch.com - you can have 昼食. This change gives foreign marketers the power to harness marketing in the URL and create a great shift into search engines to really understand the content natively instead of through translation.
Imagine trying to communicate the structure of your website (which is part of the function of a URL), but having to translate its meaning.
It will be interesting to see what domains emerge out of ICANN's Fast Track program and how that starts to change the face of global online marketing. My guess is that in-country translation and local market understanding is going to take on more relevance, and companies not creating that market competence are going to be left in the cold by local companies who will win the search war.
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