Sunday, December 29, 2019

Number one French Registry just changed

I just published (with a slight delay) the November 2019 new gTLD reports for all 20 categories and noticed a few changes:
  1. All (or almost all) registries belonging to Backend Registry Verisign had an increase of domain name registrations: this is rather strange ad I had noticed this already last year.
  2. OVH, wich ".ovh" domain names are open to all for registration saw a decline in registrations in November from 63,000 down to 62,000 and let the .BEST registry become number one in registrations from 51,000 to 69,400 domain names.
That Corporate Registrar Sucks
Note for my December new gTLD report: I also noticed that my reports are used by - at least - one American Corporate Registrar for his clients. For this reason, I might delay the publication of coming reports. This is not the first time that it happens unfortunately so expect my contents...not to be free to read anymore, unless you want to sponsor them ;-)

2 new gTLD Reports in 2020
I am considering 2 new reports in 2020:
  1. The .BRAND new gTLD report (note that this one will note be published publicly;
  2. The TOP 10 new gTLD report.
If you have ideas of a new report, I am happy to consider.

Wednesday, December 18, 2019

2 New gTLD Trademark Claims Periods were updated

The 2 new gTLDs concerned are:
  1. the .MOSCOW new gTLD, and;
  2. the .xn--80adxhks new gTLD (the IDN from .MOSCOW).
The update is the Trademark Claims Period which was updated from previous date to 04 January 2021.

Learn more on .MOSCOW and .xn--80adxhks.

Saturday, December 14, 2019

Top 5 of new gTLDs in Sports for November 2019

This is the TOP 5 for new gTLDs dedicated to Sports. These are the volumes of domain names created for the past 4 month.

For example, the Registry for domain name ending in ".yoga" (instead of ".com") had a total of 10,695 domain names created in August 2019 and this number went increasing until 11,013 at the end of November 2019.

Three of these domain name extensions with more than 1,000 domain names created kept growing in number form January 2019 to November. When a TLD evolves that way, we can imagine that it is meeting with adoption bu end users.


AugustSeptemberOctoberNovember
.RUN17,86618,18618,17418,841
.BIKE16,24016,20916,24316,270
.YOGA10,69510,81010,92811,013
.FITNESS10,89910,96110,97210,932
.GOLF9,86110,16510,14410,149

As usual since 2016, numbers in red mean that the volume of existing domain names lowered from the month before and in blue, it increased significantly. When no color, it means that the volume of domain names created keeps growing.

Read the full report with 29 new gTLDs for sports in total, dotBrands included.

In 2019, the NIKE Trademark offered a position (a job) which included the management of the .NIKE dotBrand Top-Level Domain but according to the numbers, there was one single domain name created since the extension was delegated in July 2016: sadly, there seems to be no plan to use domain names ending in ".nike". Something like www.snickers.nike would be quite innovative I believe.

Thursday, December 5, 2019

New gTLDs for City Names in November 2019

I quite like city names kind of new gTLDs, I mean by this, the name of a city as a domain name extension. There are 45 of them: one which was supposed to be withdrawn but which is still delegated: the .DOHA new gTLD, two that are not "official" city new gTLD names but which still are name of famous cities: the .TOURS and .SPA domain name extensions, and two more that I added to the list which are: .CITY and .TOWN Top-Level Domains.


What do you see: blue or red?
I hear everywhere that "geographic" new gTLDs are a success, well...even if I am certain that they are a great tool, it is not what the numbers say. The global table (the report) containing all monthly figures from 2016 to 2019 become more and more red. It means that most registration figures tend to decrease month after month in general, and this starting 2016, except for a few cities.

Some cities are in the blue
On the total list of extensions, some remain stable  and their registration figures tend to increase slowly month after month. In the order, these TLDs are:
  1. The .NYC new gTLD for the city of New-York (USA);
  2. The city of Paris and its .PARIS (France);
  3. The .TOURS but this one is not a city name only but an English word with a total other meaning (France);
  4. The .MIAMI extension (USA);
  5. The .BRUSSELS extension (Belgium);
  6. The .GENT (Belgium);
  7. The .KYOTO (Japan). Note that starting from here, domain name registrations are below the thousand;
  8. The .OSAKA (Japan);
  9. The .MADRID (Spain);
  10. The .STOCKHOLM (Where it is always cold).
All other cities are neither stable nor seeing increase of domain name registrations on the long run. Note that the ICANN new gTLD program, even if "launched" in 2012, is almost unknown to many users and I would say that the reason of these poor numbers is here. Now, would there be a massive communication campaign about new gTLDs, I doubt this would make a big difference: companies don't change their domain name and a local business - even if local - does not want to limit its business to the city where it is based. There are interesting usage models to imagine here ;-)

Wednesday, December 4, 2019

The .WANG new gTLD = WTF

Once a month, I edit the "Multiple Registries" new gTLD report: it is dedicated to registries operating five and more domain name extensions. Most operators are famous and we can easily see which is on the right curve and which is not.

This month I noticed that ZODIAC, changed position on my board and gained many places up to the top. The move was noticeable: it went from position eleventh (below 150,000 registrations in total) to position five in my "Top Multiple Registry" report.

Digging a little further, I noticed that one of its registries, the .WANG one, had exactly 146,260 domain names registered in the end of October 2019 and... 920,020 for the end of November, just one month after. It means that 773,760 new domain names were created in one single month.

I requested an explanation to the primary contact of the TLD but my little finger tells me that I won't receive an answer.


Monday, December 2, 2019

New gTLDs and Politics: November 2019

I just issued the November 2019 new gTLD report dedicated to Politics and there is an interesting figure (when it usually is a rather boring report):
  • From the 12 domain name extensions listed, the .BEST new gTLD hits the top of the listing and passes the volume of domain name registrations from the .GURU new gTLD; the registration curves from the two TLDs are the opposite one from the other: the .BEST keeps increasing when .GURU keeps decreasing. Reminder: the .GURU new gTLD was the first to launch when the ICANN new gTLD program started to delegate extensions.
  • The .VOTE dances with a small increase of registrations but .VOTING clearly dives from a poor 706 registrations to a 337 regs.
  • The .EXPOSED new gTLD is clearly exposed and dives too sticking to the red ("red" means that the volume of registrations decreases from a month to the other).
  • .DEMOCRAT and .REPUBLICAN both stagnate with a small number of registrations: the .REPUBLICAN Top-Level Domain does not even have 1,000 domain names on the market. The .DEMOCRAT does...
  • From this list of 12 new gTLDs, two have more than 50,000 registrations and the rest has less than 4,000 domain names registered. 3 TLDs have less than 1,000.
For those interested in "Multiple Registries" operating more than 5 new gTLDs, I also issued the report. The rest of the reports will come little by little.

Sunday, December 1, 2019

From 4,700 to 71,000 : the .BEST new gTLD

BlackFriday helps for sure but the curve remains impressive: the .BEST new gTLD started the year with 4,745 domain names in the root. The Tweet below from CEO Cyril Fremont announces the milestone of 71,000 registrations.
Reminder: THE.BEST social network has not even launched yet so my understanding of these numbers is that they will probably continue to increase. I personally registered jean.best for the future and will certainly use it for the upcoming application.

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