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:
- The .NYC new gTLD for the city of New-York (USA);
- The city of Paris and its .PARIS (France);
- The .TOURS but this one is not a city name only but an English word with a total other meaning (France);
- The .MIAMI extension (USA);
- The .BRUSSELS extension (Belgium);
- The .GENT (Belgium);
- The .KYOTO (Japan). Note that starting from here, domain name registrations are below the thousand;
- The .OSAKA (Japan);
- The .MADRID (Spain);
- 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 ;-)
