Miami-based dotHealth announced Tuesday it will launch the .health top-level domain, with the goal to be a premier web address for brands, organizations and individuals in the health and wellness industry.
dotHealth launched the .co domain in 2010, then one of the few competing against the almighty .com, and sold it four years later. Since then the Internet has been opened up to hundreds of domain extensions. “We are designing .health to be the new industry standard for websites in health and wellness,” said CEO Jose Ignacio Rasco in the announcement.
More than 1,000 top-level domains exist around the world but only a small number of those garner instant credibility, Rasco said. “We live in an age where we receive so much information, and we need to distill what is helpful to us,” he said. “The .health domain extension will provide a new level of confidence for those seeking information about health.”
dotHealth is taking steps to ensure the .health domain landscape is backed by reliable technology and policies to provide credible and focused content, said Rasco, who is also a co-founder of Building.co, a co-working center in the Brickell area. that opened in 2015.
Registrants who adopt .health domains will be subject to stringent terms and policies – developed with the help of an advisory board – to ensure the integrity of the . health extension and deter misuse. .health domains will also be backed by technology and security protocols administered by Neustar, the largest provider of core registry and digital naming services, which purchased .CO Internet in 2014.
dotHealth plans to begin registrations for trademarked names in May, open it to the wider health industry in July and to the general public in December. For more information, go to www.get.health.