How many times have I heard that volumes of domain names created “are not important from a Registry perspective”. Well, with Round 2 of new gTLDs approaching, I still have not met an investor in a Top-Level Domain who is OK with having less than 10,000 domain names created in 10 years after launch. Have you?
Domain name volumes are important, not only because it costs a lot to maintain a Registry so “money must come in”, but also because reaching out to adoption goes through a maximum number of “users”: no users equals no visibility for a domain name extension. 1,241 new domain name extensions completed the 2012 ICANN new gTLD program (existing generic and country code Top-Level Domains excluded from that number). In more simple words, adding another domain name extension to that list is a challenge in terms of success.
The numbers
Below is a reading of
22 new gTLD reports from the year 2023 in various categories of Top-Level Domains: Sport, Trademarks, City names, Finance, Health… This reading focuses on…numbers of domain names created from January 2023 to December 2023 (don't forget to click down the page on 2023 to read the reports).
- In the Finance sector:
- There were 2,671 .BANK domain names created in December 2023. The .BANK new gTLD was delegated in 2015 so that’s 8 years after launch.
- The .ALLFINANZ dotBrand Registry had 1,276 domain names created in December 2023. This number is lower than in January 2023 but remains an interesting one since this is a Trademark which uses these domain names for its own use.
- The number of .BET domain names has seen a significant increase from January to December 2023: 24,820 more domain names were created in one year.
- The .FINANCE Top-Level Domain is losing traction and lost 11,177 domain names in one year.
- Funny about .LOANS and .LOAN : one lost approximately 1,000 domains while the other gained them in one year.
- Same for .MARKET and .MARKETS : one gained domains in one year while the other lost some.
- Trademarks, also named “.BRANDs”, have globally increased their number of registered domain names: it is the case for .ABBOTT which counts 359 personalized domain names in December 2023. Other Trademarks are concerned by this increase in the number of domain names created : .ACO - .AFL - .ALSTOM - .AMAZON - .AUDI - .AXA - .AZURE - .FOX - .IFM - .ITV - .LECLERC - .PHILIPS - .SBI - .SCHWARZ - .SHELL - .SKY - .TORAY - .TOYOTA - .TUI - .VIG - .WEIR - .YANDEX.
- In the sector of extensions dedicated to Corporations:
- The .APP - .BEST (+30,000 domains) and .BLOG Top-Level Domains have seen a significant increase from January to December
- The .CEO new gTLD, acquired this year is one that we will discuss later on.
- The .EMAIL new gTLD, a must have to me, is not as successful as expected but still ends with 120,281 domain name registrations. This is more than in January.
- The .LINK adds 20,000 more domain name registrations.
- The .ONLINE registry almost adds one million more domains in a year. This is a lot but note that these domains are often sold at a low price and a much higher renewal price so this can explain that.
- .PAGE, a Google property, loses 13,000 domain names...
- The .商标 IDN new gTLD (Trademark in Chinese) adds a little more then 2,000 registrations.
- Politics:
- Funny how the .DEMOCRAT and .REPUBLICAN extensions end the year with one domain name difference: 1,142 and 1,141 domains. 1,292 for .GOP by the way.
- Surprisingly, .VOTO, the Spanish version of "vote" ends the year with almost twice the number of .VOTE domain name registrations for a total of 9,276 domain names.
- Community Top-Level Domains: don't ask me why .SKI is listed as a community application when other sport applications are generic ones (...). Anyway:
- The .ARCHI (for architecture) does not find traction and ends the year with 3,406 domain names created, which is less than in January from the same year. This Registry was created 10 years ago.
- The KIDS Top-Level Domain, last Top-Level Domain to be delegated in 2022 adds 1,800 more domain names.
- Unsurprisingly, most community TLDs stagnate.
- Geographic Top-Level Domains:
- Surprisingly, .AFRICA and .BAR (for Barcelona) lose in December 2/3 of the domains they had in January from the same year.
- .QUEBEC is one of the rare TLDs with .VEGAS which adds a little more than 1,000 domains to its total from January and .TAIPEI gained 2,000 more domains in just one month between November and December.
- The .TOKYO Top-Level Domains lost 50,000 domains during 2023.
- Generally speaking, most Geographic Top-Level Domains either stagnate or lose registrations.
- Sport:
- The .BIKE Registry adds a little less than 4,000 domains to its total, 3,000 for .RUN and 1,000 domains for the .FISHING new gTLD (reminder: there's a .FISH new gTLD too).
- The .SURF Top-Level Domain ends the year losing 2,000 domains for a total of 4,817 domain names created. This domain name extension was created 10 years ago and ends 2023 with less than 5,000 created (...) These niche extensions really need more support from their industry. I find it unbelievable that "nobody" came with a solution to support more such fantastic extensions in the Surf industry.
- Registration numbers for the .TENNIS new gTLDs are lower than 2,000 registrations, 9 years after (...)
- City names:
- On a list of 43 "city name" domain name extensions (.CITY and .TOWN included), 10 cities only end the year with more registrations than in January 2023. The cities concerned are: Boston, Brussels, Kyoto, Moscow and its IDN (now a terrorist state), Nagoya, Quebec, Stockholm, Taipei, and Vegas.
- ...and .PARIS lost 4,000 more registrations, more than New-York and London.
- The .TOKYO extension lost 55,000 creations.
- Luxury:
- There is something funny when reading the Luxury report right after the City names report; most numbers increase when it is the opposite in the previous report. Everything that touches luxury...
- Interesting: the .VIP new gTLD gains 200,000 more registrations in one year!
- Also, the .YACHTS extension, a small niche Registry, really seems to start gaining traction multiplying by 3 its number of registrations from January 2023. It ends the year with 13,029 domain names registered. I wonder what happened there.
- Law:
- The .ESQ Registry, which launched in 2014, started the year with 2 domain names created and ends the year with 2,075. These projects are a paradox to me: it took Google 10 years to launch this extension (...) : 10 years!
- Interesting how .LEGAL is taking the lead on this category of extension, it is ending the year with more than it had in January 2023 with a total of 19,453 and gained a little less than 2,000 domains in one year. The .LAW new gTLD ends the year with 20,838 but has less registrations than in January of the same year.
- Numbers from .FAIRWINDS are not important but this extension is one created in the first Round of new gTLDs by a new gTLD service provider.
- Real Estate:
- There are lots of domain names extensions in Real Estate but .HOMES gained 22,000 more registrations this year and seems to grow significantly.
- The .REALTOR extension, a specific extension from the real estate industry gained more than 2,500 domains in one year.
- Most other extensions end the year with less domain name creations.
- Oups, .REALESTATE ends the year with 1,500 domain name created.
- Car:
- This reports' section has lots of .BRANDs and two of them created domain names in 2023:
- The .FORD Trademark created 6 more domains in one year for a total of 12 in December 2023.
- Audi seems to be the only Car Trademark to have understood the power of a personalized domain name extension and created 28 more .AUDI domains in one year for a total of 1,699 creations.
- .AUTOS adds 27,000 more creations in one year and ends the year with a total of 49,052 domains created.
- Singular vs Plural:
- The .AUTO and .AUTOS Top-Level Domains have quite different numbers: .AUTO ends the year with 515 domains in total (less than in January of the same year) while .AUTOS more than double its number of registrations in one year.
- More or less the same is happening to the .GAME and .GAMES extensions. By the way, .GAMES ends the year with more creations for a total of 48,729 creations: quite good to me for the video game business.
- The .CAREERS new gTLD ends the year with 7 times more the number of .CAREER domain names.
- The .COUPON new gTLD has not launched yet and still has 1 domain name created (it was delegated in 2016) while .COUPONS ends the year with 2,357 creations. The exact same thing is happening for both .CRUISE and .CRUISES, and, .DEAL and .DEALS gTLDs.
- Both .GIFT and .GIFTS have the same progression curve.
- The .WATCHES is a funny one: it launched in 2015 and created its first domains in June 2023. It ends the year with an increasing number of registrations for a total of 238 domain names. The .WATCH has 10,156 domain names in total.
- The .WORK extension ends the year with 270,054 creations, less than in January of the same year, while .WORKS stagnates around the 30,000 creations.
- Health:
- The .HEALTH Top-Level Domain gained 3,000 creations by the end of 2023 to 37,186 domains.
- .MED had 2,221 in January - gained 30,000 more in June 2023 - and ended the year with 41,815 domain names: impressive !
- Funny how .RIP almost doubled its number of creations in November 2023 and ended the year with 16,717 domain names.
- .SKIN is an interesting TLD too : it started the year with 15,359 domains and ended it with 44,454.
- Religion:
- The fantastic .CATHOLIC Top-Level Domain many want to use remains "untouched" with 15 domain names created in total (...) when .ISMAILI has 21.
- Funny : .CHRISTMAS gained 1,000 more domains in - guess what - December 2023.
- Music:
- .COUNTRY gained 2,000 more domains in one year and ended it with 4,794 creations.
- .PARTY gained 2,000 more domains too and ended the year with 21,201 domains.
- .LIVE lost domains during 2023 but still ended the year with a total of 651,732 domain. names.
- Catering:
- The .BAR Top-Level Domains lost 79,000 domains and ended the year with 41,417 domain names.
- Same for .REST : the TLD lost 24,700 domains during the year.
- Photography (new):
- .ART added 15,000 more domains to its root, ending the year with 251,355 domain names.
- The .CANON dotBrand added 6 more domains and uses a total of 73 personalized domain names.
- Both .FILM and .MOVIE kept declining slightly. None has more than 7,000 domains created.
- The .MOV extension grew from 2 domains in January to 3,928 in the end of December.
- .STUDIO kept growing and ended the year with 116,903 domain names in total.
- .PICS more than doubled its number of registration during the year and ended with 69,934 domains.
- French Applications: coming soon.
- Color: coming soon.
- Alcohol: coming soon.
- Adults: coming soon.
You didn’t like that reading, right? You would have probably loved to read that your new gTLD project will create millions of new domain names in the next Round of the ICANN new gTLD program to take place in 2026. Well, this is probably not going to happen since 7 projects on a list of 1,241 have more than 1 million domain names created, 3,7 million for the highest of them (".com" alone has 160+ million).
Jovenet Consulting goes to the point: we focus on numbers and innovation. It is why our approach to creating Registries is conservative and might differ from what you will probably hear elsewhere: thinking that earning lots of money by adding another domain name extension to an already crowded market is naive. There are other ways. Oh and yes, we participated in the first Round of ICANN new gTLDs.
