Wednesday, September 23, 2015

New .NEWS domain names start to be adopted

The .NEWS new gTLD
Just for those who still do not understand what "gTLD" means, it stands for "generic Top-Level Domain". And for those who do not know what a generic Top-Level Domain is, it is a domain name extension: what comes in the end of a domain name. In www.fresh.news, the domain name extension is ".news".

Domain names ending in ".news" can be a good match for journalists but not only. If professionals from the paper and online press publish news, they are not alone: a news can be written by anyone, any business with a relation to posting up-to-date information online. Bloggers are concerned here.

Domain names which meet adoption
There are exercises I often do to see if a specific domain name extension meets adoption or not:
  1. I check (weekly) new gTLD registration volumes so I can see which extension has increasing domain name registrations and which extension hasn't. My latest report was published (in French) here. You will note in blue the extensions which registration volumes increase in a significant way and .NEWS is one of them in my latest report.
  2. I use the Google's "advanced search" to check how many websites really use this domain name extension. To find how many websites use a ".news" domain name you must first do a search on Google (whatever you like), then you should click on top-right on the little wheel and select "Advanced search". Remove what you searched for in the field entitled "all these words" and add "news" in the field entitled "site or domain". See below how to proceed:
Last time I proceed for .NEWS I found "about 716,000 results (0.24 seconds)".

.NEWS beats competitors

The .NEWS new gTLD has competitors and the biggest one is not .PRESS, it is .BLOG but .NEWS has many advantages:
  1. it is multilingual;
  2. it is cheap: $10 at the moment at some Registrars;
  3. we do not know how much a ".blog" will cost since it has not launched yet;
  4. ".press" is more for the press specifically rather than news in general.
  5. registration volumes don't lie:
    1. there are 24,936 ".news" domain names registered;
    2. there are 7,239 ".press" doamins registered.
A problem I foresee with the .NEWS Registry
Anyone interested in following new about new gTLDs reads www.newsgtlds.com and you probably noticed that this website still uses an old ".com" domain name. Isn't it a pity to read news about new gTLDs on a website which uses an old domain name? The reason of this is that this website was launched long prior the launching of the ICANN new gTLD program but isn't it time for a change?

The problem I face here is that gtld.news is a Premium domain name and guess how much I would have to pay to change my old ".com" to "gtld.news"?

;-)

Sources:

The Sun Rises on .EARTH today

The .EARTH Sunrise Period
The Sunrise Period for the .EARTH new gTLS starts today.
When:
  • SUNRISE PERIOD START:
    Wednesday, 23 September, 2015 - 16:00;
  • SUNRISE PERIOD END:
    Tuesday, 17 November, 2015 - 16:00.
Source (TMCH):
http://www.trademark-clearinghouse.com/content/earth. Website of the Registry: nic.earth

The Earth.club domain name is availabe to register here.

.BRAND new gTLD Reports are updated once a month: CLICK HERE !