Friday, October 5, 2018

Companies and new gTLDs: volumes

The Companies new gTLD report is an interesting one: it focuses on new domain name extensions that we believe companies should secure their domain name, and/or trademark(s) with. These new gTLDs make sense for companies since most are generic and could represent the company on Internet, using a domain name extensions that offers more precision than ".com". Some extensions listed are words often used for business like the .BLOG or .EMAIL new gTLDs.

Four IDNs
4 IDNs (domain name extensions using a different alphabet or with accents) are listed for the words "trademark", "company" (also available in the American Standard Code for Information Interchange and in English), "corporate group" and "world" (also available in ASCII and in English).

Growing or not?
The first thing that I like to have a look at, is if registration volumes grow from a month to the other and also, if they've grown since the beginning of the year. Surprisingly, many have lost registrations since January 2018 but the one after grow in a conservative way: .BLOG - .EMAIL - .GROUP - .COMPANY - .GLOBAL - .EXPERT - .INTERNATIONAL - .商标 (".trademark") and .SUPPORT.

Figures
On this list of 22 extensions, 6 have more than 100,000 registrations and one should pass the million by the end of the year. 3 kept gaining registrations since January 2018: .COMPANY - .INTERNATIONAL and .商标 (".trademark").

Trademarks
An interesting extension is the .TRADEMARK new gTLD, available in its Chinese script only: the .商标 Top-Level Domain has a lot of successus and registration figures don't drop: trademarks are concerned here. Now: what use can you have of a domain name ending in .商标 but to protect yourself? I don't know.

.WEB - .SITE or .WEBSITE ?
If the awaited .WEB new gTLD has not launched yet, .SITE and .WEBSITE seem to be gaining a lot of traction in October 2018. They don't if you look at the month of January 2018: they now have less registrations than in January 2018. I feel that these domain name endings all look alike and that's a problem when you launch a website: you don't want the exact same second level domain name to be registered in an extension that has almost the same meaning as the one for your website. I consider these TLDs confusing.

Impressive
The .ONLINE new gTLD is about to pass the 1 million domain name registrations: this is a lot. I find that it is very close to .WEB - .SITE and .WEBSITE so I am not buying but I agree that a Trademark, with the financial capacity to secure its assets, should secure its name in these extensions: just in case.

Similar but in different languages
Three extensions are available in English and in Chinese: .WORLD and .世界 (Chinese) - .GROUP and .集团 (Chinese) - .COMPANY and .公司 (Chinese). All have their volume of domain names to increase in their English ASCII version but all loose registrations in the Chinese one, when comparing starting the month of January. Are end users ready for IDN new gTLDs?

Focus on .BEST
If registration figures are not impressive in this TLD and its 2,682 registrations in total, Companies should be informed that the extension is relaunching, adding to its business model a social network based on reviews, and a seriously innovative cryptocurrency to reward reviewers. Registration figures should increase in 2019 since this TLD is changing hands with a complete different approach to selling domain names. Trademarks are concerned here too. The new social network is set to launch in 2019.

Legacy TLDs
I had to add the .PRO and .COM legacy TLDs since they are professional domain name extensions that I would recommend, not to use, but to secure and use as a redirection to a new domain name.

Read the report here.

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