Wednesday, January 8, 2020

Singular vs Plural new gTLDs: 2019 in Review

When the ICANN new gTLD program launched, no one would have expected that multiple extensions would exist in their singular AND plural version. Well they exist and there are 22 of them.
Note that .MOTO (a .BRAND) is not the plural of .MOTORCYCLES but it could look like and the same applies to .NEW and .NEWS Top-Level Domains.

This is my review of these extensions - in terms of volumes of domain names created - by their respective registries.

So : "S" or no "S" ?
My answer really refers to no specific logic but just a reading of the figures and I don't find them attractive, it's clearly a "no" to me:
  1. Almost no Singular and Plural new gTLDs have more registrations in December 2019 than in...January 2019. On my list of 22 twins, only 16 out of 45 (.HOTEL had 3 "plurals) had more registrations after 12 months. The TLDs concerned are:
    1. .AUTOS
    2. .CAREER
    3. COUPONS
    4. .DEALS
    5. .FAN
    6. .GAME and .GAMES
    7. .MARKETS
    8. .MOTORCYCLES
    9. .NEW (by Google)
    10. .PHOTO and .PHOTOS
    11. .SUPPLY
    12. .WATCH
    13. .WORK and .WORKS
  2. Some TLDs from ex Famous Four Media (now GRS Domains) lost (a lot of) registrations:
    1. The .ACCOUNTANT new gTLD lost 52,000 registrations in one single year;
    2. The .LOAN new gTLD lost (...) 2,182,000 registrations in one single year;
    3. The .REVIEW new gTLD lost 132,000 registrations in one single year.
  3. Only 5 TLDs lost no domain names from a month to the other during the entire period. The TLDs concerned are:
    1. .FAN (belonging to Multiple Registry Donuts Inc.) ended the year with 3,411 domain names;
    2. .GAMES (belonging to Multiple Registry Donuts Inc.) ended the year with 20,149 domain names;
    3. .MOTORCYCLES (belonging to Multiple Registry Dominion) ended the year with 214 domain names;
    4. .NEW ended the year with...262 domain names created;
    5. .WORKS (belonging to Multiple Registry Donuts Inc.) ended the year with 20,956 domain names created.
  4. 6 extensions still have one single domain name registration.
Read the full report here.

Coming: "City Name new gTLDs: 2019 in Review"

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