Thursday, January 4, 2018

Real Estate and new gTLDs: blue or red?

Few Real Estate related domain name extensions are reaching out to the 10,000+ domain name registrations in 2017 but eight of them and three have more than 40,000 domains registered:
  1. the .REALTY new gTLD;
  2. the .REALTOR TLD and (there is a "story" about these registration volumes);
  3. the .AGENCY Top-Level Domain (which we will remove from the listing since an agency is not necessarily a Real Estate agency).

Sticking to the blue
Seven new gTLDs kept receiving registrations from January to December: .HOUSE - .PLACE (will be removed in 2018) - .INSURE (removed in 2018) - .CREDIT (removed in 2018) and .HOMES are part of these.

Sticking to the red
Some TLDs are NOT doing good and by writing this, I mean that they lost registrations from January to December, when the opposite should happen. Note that this does not mean that they are "dead TLDs", it means to me that operators of some of these registries just "stopped the crap" and ceased using fake methods to show that their domains are being adopted. Another reason can be that...registrants are just not renewing for other reasons and some of them could be:
  • Why renew a domain name that I will probably not use when I have discovered that its plural version also exists?
  • Worse: why renew when I have discovered that the plural version of my domain is registered by a third party?
  • Why would I confuse visitors of my website with too many domain name extensions which mean the same?
Explanation: by "plural version" of a domain name, I refer to the exact same second level domain name registered in two different domain name extensions, the singular AND the plural version: www.whatever.property AND www.whatever.properties. The explanation for a "same meaning" would be: www.whatever.rent and www.whatever.rentals.

The TLDs concerned are: .REALTOR - .LAND - .PROPERTIES - .RENTALS - .ESTATE - .IMMOBILIEN - .PROPERTY - .REIT - .INSURANCE

Sticking to the "ultra red"
Some top-Level domains lost more than 50% of their initial registrations from January to December: .CASA - .RENT and .ARCHI

Awaited
One highly expected domain name extension has been in stand-by for...years. The registry agreement for the .REALESTATE new gTLD was signed in September 2015 but the website of the future operator only says: "it is anticipated that it will launch in the first quarter of 2018". There were four applicants for this extension.

Check the full report here.

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