Finance and new gTLDs: blue or red?

There is a lot happening in Finance "and" new gTLDs. In fact this report on monthly domain name registration volumes is one of the longest from the Jovenet Consulting new gTLD reports. One of the reasons for this is that lots of Trademarks in the finance applied for their .BRAND new gTLD. The top of the report clearly is about generic domain name extensions dedicated to selling domain names but almost two thirds of it is about .BRANDs. Surprisingly, half of the .BRAND TLDs...are just not being used.

54 .BRANDS and 34 generics
Some Trademarks have put their personalized domain names in use and have registered more than 100 for them: .CREDITUNION (500 domain names) - .DVAG (200 of them) .BNPPARIBAS - .CITIC - .BLOOMBERG - .BRADESCO and .BARCLAYS

Between 10 and 100 .BRAND domains
15 financial .BRAND Trademarks have registered between 10 and 100 of their domain names. The interesting thing about this is that the volume of these registrations has kept increasing: a sign that .BRANDs are finding adoption?

No news from Boston Ivy
The registry in charge of operating .FOREX - .MARKETS - .TRADING - .CFD - .SPREADBETTING and .BROKER shows small signs of development and such niche TLDs with their low number of domain names registered seem to find difficulties to recruit registrars. Note that the price of these domains has already been lowered but...have all solutions been considered? Not sure.

Abandoned .TRUST new gTLD?
The .TRUST new gTLD received no more registrations on a one year period of time and sticked to 51 domains from January to December 2017. We found interesting titles used such as a "Domain Assured Portal" which could be an attractive service for owners of domain names at high risk of being stolen, wrongly transferred or..."and more".

Generics: blue or red?
What about generic financial new gTLDs? These are the domain name extensions dedicated to selling financial domains through the network of accredited Registrars: have they been successful in terms of volumes of domains registered?

First of all, it is important to note that 10 of them kept receiving registrations month after month and never lost one single registration (and when it was, more other domains were registered). This is a good sign for a registry (when it does not cheat). The extensions concerned are: .MARKET - .FUND - .CASH - .CAPITAL - .EXCHANGE - .FINANCE - .CREDIT - .FINANCIAL - .INVESTMENTS and .MARKETS

Then we have extensions which behaved strangely: the .LOAN gained 1,3 million registrations during the year. This is a lot and there is a story behind this...of course. It lost 1,8 million domains between June and July (...) The funny thing is that the plural version of this same TLD - the .LOANS new gTLD - gained registrations too but only has 3,584 registrations in total. Strange, isn't it?

Some TLDs lost (a lot of) registrations: The .BID new gTLD lost 90,000 registrations between January and December and .ACCOUNTANT lost 39,000 (its plural version - .ACCOUNTANTS - only has 2,573...in total. The .TRADE Top-Level domain lost 2,500 domains.

Finally, only five TLDs like .DIAMONDS lost registrations between January and December and 22 .BRAND extensions sticked to one single registration in one year.

Check the full report here.

New gTLDs for the Law: blue or red?

Have new domain name extensions dedicated to the law received many domain name registrations in 2017? This table tracked registration volumes from January to December.

The list
There are not so many TLDs related to the law: .LAWYER - .LEGAL - .LAW - .商标 (".trademark") - .ATTORNEY - .PARTNERS - (.BAR) - .ASSOCIATES - .ABOGADO - .FAIRWINDS (a Trademark) and .ESQ

We found no other generic extensions dedicated to selling domain names but we found other trademarks with a connection to the law. We did not list them because they do not deal with legal things only but also accounting and plenty of other subjects. We are happy to add those we could not have noticed.

Blue or red?
The .LAW new gTLD gained more domain name registrations than all other extensions: 3,500 of them in one year and 2,000 for .LEGAL while .LAWYER gained...none.

The .PARTNERS and .ASSOCIATES kept receiving domain name registrations each month and sticked to the blue from January to December ("blue" meaning that they received registrations and "red" that they lost some).

Check the full report here.

Unsure if this .BRAND has noticed

It is a fact: owners of new gTLDs do not all use their personalized domain name extension because they don't know what to do with it. They pay for it because they can.

It is also a fact that some...don't know what they bought. I went to some meetings where the people belonging to a .BRAND new gTLD did not even know that they had their own extension.

I wonder if it is the case for the .LAMER new gTLD which advertises for a .CREMEDELAMER on the frontpage of its Registry. This is a Top-Level Domain that actually does not exist.

http://nic.lamer/

The future of Round 2 ?

Extracted from the slide of a working group at ICANN

This is what the next kind of new gTLD applications could look like instead of  "generic", "community" and "geographic" from the first round of the ICANN new gTLD program.

New domains for Companies: were we right?

In 2016 we started to select a certain number of domain name extensions in which we believed that companies should secure their (second level) domain names with: because they'd want to use it, or..."just in case". In 2017, from January to December, we tracked the variations of these registration volumes to see if they attracted consumers (Registrants) or not, and we're happy to see that we were not so wrong.

Note that if the number of domain names registered in a certain extension is not the only criteria for a successful new gTLD, it remains an important one.

Our selection
Here is the list of TLDs that that we believe companies should secure their domain name with:

1. New gTLDs: .VIP - .SITE - .WEBSITE - .BLOG - .WORLD - .SOLUTIONS - .EMAIL - .COMPANY - .公司 (company) - .GLOBAL - .INTERNATIONAL - .EXPERT - .SUPPORT - .TEAM - .BUZZ - .商标 (".trademark" in Chinese) - .世界 (world) - .集团 (corporate group) - .CEO - .FEEDBACK - .WHOSWHO - .CONTACT - .WEB (coming).
2. Legacy TLDs: .COM - .PRO - .TEL

What about 2017: blue or red?
With such an important list of more than 750 new domain name extensions, we did not want to select too many: just the one that we think are generic and international enough to be registered by a Trademark.

A certain number of TLDs have been very successful in 2017: the .VIP new gTLD gained 200,000 more registrations between January and December. This is mainly due to the chinese market.

The .BLOG - a must have - received almost 100,000 more registrations in one year and 50,000 more for the .WORLD new gTLD. The .SOLUTIONS received 20,000 more and 15,000 more for .EMAIL (let's hope that .MAIL does not see the day). 10,000 more registrations for the .COMPANY and .GLOBAL new gTLDs. With .TEAM, all of these extensions just kept receiving registrations from a month to the other (understand that they sticked to the blue). The .WHOSWHO TLD which received 15 registrations in one year ;-)

The .SITE lost 48,000 registrations: this is a surprise since the .WEBSITE belongs to the same Registry and gained 40,000 more domains during the same period. The .世界 (.world) new gTLD lost...28,400 domain name registrations between January and December. Few TLDs from this report have lost registrations and when they did, except for .SITE and .世界 (.world), they lost very few, they stagnated during one year.

Did Jean Guillon secure his trademarks in these extensions?
Let's admit it: securing a Trademark in "just" all of these extensions is an investment and as a very small company, I admit that I used my budget a different way. I use a .CONSULTING domain name for my company but I secured in .BLOG - .EMAIL - .COMPANY - .COM and .TEL. I also own other domain names in the .INTERNATIONAL and .BUZZ new gTLDs from this list.

What about 2018?
We will probably remove the .TEL from our list and it is yet unclear if .SITE and .WEBSITE are absolutely necessary for a Trademark to secure: unfortunately, they are not the only generic TLDs and when their number is too important (there is a .ONLINE too), we think that it drops their value. Not to forget that .WEB - a possible game changer - will come at some point too. By the way, I will combine two reports in a single one in 2018: "Company" and "Generics" will come as one.

Check the full report here.

City new gTLDs: blue or red?

Which have been the number of domain name registered for city names as a new domain name extension in 2017?

From January 2017 to December 2017, we took a monthly snapshot of each city domain name registration volume. There are 42 of them to which we added 2 domain name extension related to cities:  the .CITY and the .TOWN new gTLD. Tours is a famous city in France so we added it too.

Blue or Red?
As usual, blue is for the city names which gained domain name registrations from a month to the other and red is for those who lost some.

In general, we can see that there's not so much red in the table but for a few TLDs. This is not the case for other groups of TLDs. As you will notice below the problem with city TLDs is that...they stagnate.

Some cities are successful: the .TOKYO Top-Level Domain gained 25,000 registrations in one year and 16,000 for .LONDON while the .NYC gained almost...no registration on a 12 months period of time.

There is an interesting project out there which explains the success of the .CITY new gTLD: one registrant own 22,000 of them: let's hope that this project is a success! The .TOWN knew a constant progression curve until beginning of december 2017. These two generic TLDs do progress.

If .TOKYO is a success, the .VEGAS is another one, it gained 6,000 registrations in one year and never went backward from a month to the other. Other city TLDs which have sticked to the blue:

• The .BOSTON new gTLD which launched in September 2017;
• The .YOKOHAMA Japanese TLD;
• The .TOURS (not a city TLD but I don't mind, it is a city too in France);
• The .BRUSSELS extension;
• The .OKINAWA extension from Japan;
• The .KYOTO extension from Japan.

Some city TLDs are still in "we have no idea what to do with our TLD" mode and have registered very few domains: .DUBAI - .MADRID - .ABUDHABI and .STOCKHOLM (when a TLD registers a very limited number of domain names, it can mean that it is doing tests and there nothing more coming).

January was better than December
Some cities had more domain names registered in the beginning of the year, in January 2017 than in December 2017. It is the case for .NYC - .BERLIN - .KOELN - .HAMBURG - .PARIS - .MOSCOW and its IDN, the .МОСКВА new gTLD - .WIEN - .ISTANBUL - .MIAMI - .IST -.QUEBEC - .BARCELONA - .COLOGNE - .DURBAN and the .RIO new gTLD. Some of these registration volumes stagnate, let's hope 2018 will be better year.

Check the full report here.