Monday, December 10, 2018

How city name new gTLDs are growing

There are 38 cities worldwide to have applied for their own domain name extension, some submitted more than one application to shorten their string and one city submitted two applications for the same name but in two different languages. This is an analysis of the November/December 2018 report with volumes of domain names registered for each city extensions. I strongly suggest to check the full report to have access to all volumes of domain names registered in the end of this publication:
  • There are 44 new gTLDs dedicated to cities in total;
  • Four cities submitted two applications:
    • One for the exact city name and the other for a shortened name:
      • The city of Barcelona went for .BARCELONA and .BCN
      • The city of Istanbul went for .ISTANBUL and .IST
    • One for the ASCII version of its name and the other for its IDN version:
      • The city of Moscow went for .MOSCOW and .МОСКВА (IDN)
    • One for its name in french and the other in the language of its country:
      • The city of Koeln went for .COLOGNE and .KOELN
  • There are:
    • Four applications for USA city names only;
    • Six applications for Japanese cities;
    • and Seventeen European applications.
  • The .ABUDHABI started to create domain names in July and is one an interesting (and positive) learning curve. It now has 512 domains registered.
  • Two city new gTLDs with more than 1,000 registrations kept growing month after month since January 2018: .TOKYO and .BOSTON (it means that volumes of domain names registered from a month to the other kept increasing);
  • The .LONDON new gTLD lost more than 10,000 registrations in one month;
  • Since January 2018;
    • The .TOKYO new gTLD gained 30,000 new domain name registrations;
    • The .NYC gained a little more than 200, the same as .BRUSSELS;
    • The .TAIPEI lost half of its initial volume of domains registered.
  • On the list of 44 extensions, 15 city names in total have more domain names registered in November the 30th than what they had in January: that's not even half.
  • The .TOURS Top-Level domain was not created by the French city of Tours but it remains the name of a city. It is possible that there are many more in the full list of new gTLDs;
  • Three extensions kept loosing registrations (almost) all year long: .MELBOURNE - .SYDNEY and .TAIPEI
  • The .CITY and .TOWN Top-Level Domains have lost registrations since January 2018.
  • Three cities have registered one single domain name since they were delegated: .BCN (for Barcelona) - .HELSINKY and .BUDAPEST
  • The first geographic TLD to have terminated its application is recent, it is the .DOHA Top-Level Domain for the city of the same name (November 2018).
Read the full report (also available in French).

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