Tuesday, January 14, 2020

City new gTLDs: 2019 in Review

I believe that every business should acquire its name in the city where it resides (when the TLD exists) and setup a page just for this: it makes sense to provide that information to the public and let it be indexed; but it also benefits the Search Engine Optimization of the business's existing front page. A link back is always good (as long as it is not copy-paste content). Also, for a company which business is purely local, such domain name extension will always offer more precision than a ".com"...for obvious reasons.


Have City Name extensions been a success in 2019?
On my list of 45 domain name extensions, to which I included 2 generic TLDs which are not city names, here is what I noticed in 2019:
  • The 2 generic domain names I included to my list are .TOWN and .CITY : they are no city names but I considered that they should be included in my list:
    • The .CITY new gTLD stagnated from January 2019 and even lost a few registrations in December: it ended the year with 30,962 domain names registered in total.
    • The .TOWN new gTLD gained registrations but and ended the year with 4,194 domain names.
  • .TOURS and .SPA which are not City Names were included too because they represent two famous cities. The .SPA new gTLD has no registrations yet since it was delegated recently and .TOURS gained a small 800 registrations from January to December: not because the French city of Tours attracted Registrants but because "tours" has another meaning in English.
  • The .TOKYO is the only extension to have more than 100,000 domain names created. Its follower, the .NYC new gTLD ends the year with 67,220 domain names.
  • 16 extensions have more than 10,000 domain names created. The last one of them on the list is .COLOGNE which ends the year with 10,432 domain names. The first one is .TOKYO.
  • Just 3 extensions kept gaining registrations one month after the other but such numbers are not significant since they are below 2,500. The cities concerned are (in the order):
    • The .MADRID new gTLD which ends the year with 2,156 domain names;
    • The .KYOTO ends the year with 898;
    • The .STOCKHOLM ends with 80 domains.
  • Some extensions kept loosing registrations from January:
    • .AMSTERDAM (26,385 creations in December);
    • .VEGAS (15,092);
    • .YOKOHAMA (4,412).
  • 5 extensions had no registrations from January to December:
    • .DUBAI stick to 5 domain names;
    • .BCN - .HELSINKY - .BUDAPEST and .DOHA (still listed as "Delegated") stick to one single domain name registration.
  • Some extensions have a twin sister:
    • Barcelona has .BARCELONA and .BCN
    • Moscow has .MOSCOW and its IDN, the .МОСКВА new gTLD;
    • Cologne has .COLOGNE and .KOELN
    • Istanbul has .ISTANBUL and .IST
  • 11 extensions are below the 1,000 domain name registrations. The first one of them is the .RIO new gTLD with 910 domain names created.
Read the full report here.

Coming: "New gTLDs for Companies: 2019 in Review"



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