The Business of the Internet is about to change, again.

The business of the Internet is about to change again. Soon, a new group of "generic top level domains" will be approved for use by ICANN, the Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers which is the organization that decides there should be a .com and .net and a .LA and a .TV and others.

Recently ICANN opened bidding for all sorts of new "top level domains" and several big companies and entrepreneurs have been stepping up, paying application fees of $185,000 or more to stake their claims on the new top level domains.

So soon, the American Automobile Association might have a website address such as www(dot)membership(dot)aaa and McDonalds might have a website address such as www(dot)locations(dot)mcdonalds and General Motors might have www(dot)dealers(dot)chevrolet.

So what does this mean for you and your web business? It could mean that all the money you've been pouring into search engine optimization could be money out the window or down the drain.

Let's say your business is operating a college. Someone has already applied for (dot)college and if you've got a dating website someone has already signed up for (dot)dating. Furniture is taken, Golf is taken, Fun is taken, Ford is taken, Cadillac is taken... and you get the picture.

What you thought was a great website address before won't be in just a few more months.

This will probably force the search engines to make changes too in how they operate. Search engines have been using words contained in URLs (website names) to help list their results for searches. But now, with so many companies that could be listed under (dot)realestate or (dot)marketing or (dot)casino or (dot)poker the search engines will have to do a better, more in-depth job of finding which sites really belong on top of search engine results.

So what I expect is that the search engines will put less emphasis on website "names" and even more emphasis on website content. After all, in a few more months there could literally be thousands of website addresses ending in (dot)realty.

This really puts the emphasis on the basics for developing content: more articles, more videos, updated articles, updated videos, blogs, forums and discussion groups, Q&A sections, and better writing that makes your website stand out from all the others in your field.

Update: The latest statistics from ICANN show that 1930 applications for the new generic top level domains have been made with about 1700 coming from North America and Europe. Currently there are 22 top level domains including .com and .net but the new TLD's will give certain organizations great power and great control over the web.

For example, the company or organization that controls (dot)landlord for example could decide what companies can have a website ending in (dot)landlord, and the company or organization that controls (dot)fashions can put great pressure on all sorts of competing businesses.

Fortunately, ICANN says it will carefully decide who is really qualified to have this power. Companies will have the right to file an objection to applications.