closed String Similarity Evaluation Guidelines for New gTLD Program: 2026 Round

Outcome

The ICANN organization appreciates the comments submitted by the community on the String Similarity Evaluation (SSE) Guidelines. ICANN org received seven submissions; five submissions support the SSE Guidelines and provide further recommendations, one submission suggests expanding the SSE scope, and one submission is not directly relevant to the SSE. 

All comments will be analyzed and any required updates will be incorporated into the finalized SSE Guidelines.

What We Received Input On

ICANN org has updated the String Similarity Evaluation (SSE) Guidelines, which are intended to be used by the SSE panel, along with the SSE tool and related SSE data (published for public comment), to conduct an evaluation of the applied-for strings in the New gTLD Program: 2026 Round. SSE prevents user confusion resulting from the delegation of visually similar strings. These guidelines are being published for community input.

Background

The Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) Final Report on the New gTLD Subsequent Procedures Policy Development Process recommends conducting the String Similarity Evaluation as part of the New gTLD Program: 2026 Round application evaluation process. The objective of this review is to prevent user confusion and loss of confidence in the Domain Name System (DNS) resulting from the delegation of similar strings. The Phase 1 Final Report on the Internationalized Domain Names Expedited Policy Development Process adds further details on this process and the scope of string similarity analysis to cover strings and their variant strings, also requiring development of SSE Guidelines for the SSE panel.

In preparation for the New gTLD Program: 2026 Round, ICANN org published initial draft guidelines for conducting the String Similarity Evaluation for public comment in February 2024. The guidelines proposed a tool utilizing similarity data for calculating potential similarity for the applied-for strings (and their variant strings). The tool output will assist the SSE panel in conducting the subsequent independent manual evaluation.

Following the process suggested in the initial draft guidelines, ICANN has developed the SSE tool and SSE data. The SSE data has been published for public comment.

Supporting Information