French new gTLDs: 2019 in Review

The end of December is always the right moment to have a look on what happened during the year: this is the review for French new gTLD applications, from January to December 2019:

• The .BEST Registry, acquired by French entrepreneur Cyril Fremont, went from 4,745 domain name creations to more than 86,600: the registry kept increasing in volume. This is mostly due to brands.best, its program, preparing the launching of its coming Social Network The.Best (in 2020). By the way, I strongly suggest Trademarks to keep an eye on this TLD: this social network is an innovation focusing on the registration of domain names ending in ".best". In November, .BEST became the first French Registry in volume of domain names registered.
• 3 French new gTLDs have more than 10,000 domain names registered:
• .BEST
• .OVH
• .PARIS
• I call them "Cultural TLDs" because they truly represent part of a French Culture: these are either Community or Geographic based applications with a strong identification. All of them kept increasing in volume since January 2019. Note that .ALSACE is a special case since this French region changed name recently in 2016. Their number of domain name registrations grow slowly but I am not surprised by the interest in these domains, these Top-Level Domains allow a culture to keep existing...and expand thank, to Internet:
• .BZH for (the French Brittany)
• .ALSACE
• .CORSICA (the French island of Corsica
• 4 French new gTLDs have between 1,000 and 10,000 domain names created. 3 are the cultural TLDs mentioned above and one is a .BRAND ! The MMA Trademark uses more than 1,600 domain names ending in ".mma" (instead of ".com").
• Almost all other Top-Level Domains are below the 1,000 but that is not surprising since France is one of the countries to have created the most important number of .BRAND new gTLDs and dotBrands don't create too many domain names for their own use. Note that the volumes of domains created by these .BRANDs are noticeable and ended the year with:
• 285 domain names created for the .BNPPARIBAS new gTLD (domain names ending in ".bnpparibas"). BNP PARIBAS is a Bank;
• 173 domain names for the .LECLERC new gTLD (a superstore);
• 148 domains for the .WEBER new gTLD : not the BBQ Trademark but a subsidiary of Saint Gobain offering solutions for new builds.
• 15 more .BRAND Top-Level Domains end the year with less than 100 domain names created: between 2 and up to 73.
• The .SCOR and .ALSTOM dotBrand new gTLDs created no domain names and stuck to one single registration from January to December 2019.

Read the full report here.

Coming: "Real Estate new gTLDs: 2019 in Review"

Number one French Registry just changed

I just published (with a slight delay) the November 2019 new gTLD reports for all 20 categories and noticed a few changes:

1. All (or almost all) registries belonging to Backend Registry Verisign had an increase of domain name registrations: this is rather strange ad I had noticed this already last year.
2. OVH, wich ".ovh" domain names are open to all for registration saw a decline in registrations in November from 63,000 down to 62,000 and let the .BEST registry become number one in registrations from 51,000 to 69,400 domain names.

That Corporate Registrar Sucks

Note for my December new gTLD report: I also noticed that my reports are used by - at least - one American Corporate Registrar for his clients. For this reason, I might delay the publication of coming reports. This is not the first time that it happens unfortunately so expect my contents...not to be free to read anymore, unless you want to sponsor them ;-)

2 new gTLD Reports in 2020

I am considering 2 new reports in 2020:

1. The .BRAND new gTLD report (note that this one will note be published publicly;
2. The TOP 10 new gTLD report.

If you have ideas of a new report, I am happy to consider.

Top 5 of new gTLDs in Sports for November 2019

This is the TOP 5 for new gTLDs dedicated to Sports. These are the volumes of domain names created for the past 4 month.

For example, the Registry for domain name ending in ".yoga" (instead of ".com") had a total of 10,695 domain names created in August 2019 and this number went increasing until 11,013 at the end of November 2019.

Three of these domain name extensions with more than 1,000 domain names created kept growing in number form January 2019 to November. When a TLD evolves that way, we can imagine that it is meeting with adoption bu end users.

	August	September	October	November
.RUN	17,866	18,186	18,174	18,841
.BIKE	16,240	16,209	16,243	16,270
.YOGA	10,695	10,810	10,928	11,013
.FITNESS	10,899	10,961	10,972	10,932
.GOLF	9,861	10,165	10,144	10,149

As usual since 2016, numbers in red mean that the volume of existing domain names lowered from the month before and in blue, it increased significantly. When no color, it means that the volume of domain names created keeps growing.

Read the full report with 29 new gTLDs for sports in total, dotBrands included.

In 2019, the NIKE Trademark offered a position (a job) which included the management of the .NIKE dotBrand Top-Level Domain but according to the numbers, there was one single domain name created since the extension was delegated in July 2016: sadly, there seems to be no plan to use domain names ending in ".nike". Something like www.snickers.nike would be quite innovative I believe.

New gTLDs for City Names in November 2019

I quite like city names kind of new gTLDs, I mean by this, the name of a city as a domain name extension. There are 45 of them: one which was supposed to be withdrawn but which is still delegated: the .DOHA new gTLD, two that are not "official" city new gTLD names but which still are name of famous cities: the .TOURS and .SPA domain name extensions, and two more that I added to the list which are: .CITY and .TOWN Top-Level Domains.

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:

1. The .NYC new gTLD for the city of New-York (USA);
2. The city of Paris and its .PARIS (France);
3. The .TOURS but this one is not a city name only but an English word with a total other meaning (France);
4. The .MIAMI extension (USA);
5. The .BRUSSELS extension (Belgium);
6. The .GENT (Belgium);
7. The .KYOTO (Japan). Note that starting from here, domain name registrations are below the thousand;
8. The .OSAKA (Japan);
9. The .MADRID (Spain);
10. 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 ;-)

New gTLDs and Politics: November 2019

I just issued the November 2019 new gTLD report dedicated to Politics and there is an interesting figure (when it usually is a rather boring report):

• From the 12 domain name extensions listed, the .BEST new gTLD hits the top of the listing and passes the volume of domain name registrations from the .GURU new gTLD; the registration curves from the two TLDs are the opposite one from the other: the .BEST keeps increasing when .GURU keeps decreasing. Reminder: the .GURU new gTLD was the first to launch when the ICANN new gTLD program started to delegate extensions.

• The .VOTE dances with a small increase of registrations but .VOTING clearly dives from a poor 706 registrations to a 337 regs.
• The .EXPOSED new gTLD is clearly exposed and dives too sticking to the red ("red" means that the volume of registrations decreases from a month to the other).
• .DEMOCRAT and .REPUBLICAN both stagnate with a small number of registrations: the .REPUBLICAN Top-Level Domain does not even have 1,000 domain names on the market. The .DEMOCRAT does...
• From this list of 12 new gTLDs, two have more than 50,000 registrations and the rest has less than 4,000 domain names registered. 3 TLDs have less than 1,000.

For those interested in "Multiple Registries" operating more than 5 new gTLDs, I also issued the report. The rest of the reports will come little by little.

From 4,700 to 71,000 : the .BEST new gTLD

BlackFriday helps for sure but the curve remains impressive: the .BEST new gTLD started the year with 4,745 domain names in the root. The Tweet below from CEO Cyril Fremont announces the milestone of 71,000 registrations.

.Best is on Fire during the Black Friday week 🔥🔥🔥
+71K ⬆️ Get your .Best domain now : https://t.co/etJXjHIdOo#Best #domains #domain #business #strategy #seo #Digital #DigitalMarketing #marketing #Digital #brand #brands #website #branding #Growth #MarketingStrategy #scale pic.twitter.com/qiSoM9x6ZR

— Cyril.Best (@FremontCyril) December 1, 2019

Reminder: THE.BEST social network has not even launched yet so my understanding of these numbers is that they will probably continue to increase. I personally registered jean.best for the future and will certainly use it for the upcoming application.

3 new gTLDs were terminated

The official ICANN page for terminated strings was just updated with " new extensions:

1. .xn--estv75g (Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Limited) - 07 November 2019;
2. .NADEX (Nadex Domains, Inc.) - 16 October 2019;
3. .VISTAPRINT (Vistaprint Limited) - 14 October 2019.

I find it sad that the .VISTAPRINT was terminated : the company is BtoC (first), has lots of competitors and the use of its own Top-Level Domain could have made a difference in terms of online positioning. With the so many products it offers, nit now makes it difficult to go straight to the right content and frankly, a www.visitcards.vistaprint would have offered more precision.

New gTLDs : Looking For a Position

My dear new gTLD Network,

With the next round of the ICANN new gTLD program coming, I look for a position at an existing Registry, a Backend Registry, a future new gTLD applicant, a Multiple Registry, a Registrar (Corporate or Retail), a Law Firm or a Web/Communication Agency.

What I will do for you:

• I will create your .BRAND (also called "dotBrand") new gTLD project, considering potential objections;
• I will find the perfect price and deal for your mandatory Backend Registry provider;
• I will submit your new gTLD application to the ICANN until it is delegated;
• For a project dedicated to selling domain names through the network of accredited Registrars; I will operate and promote your TLD with the appropriate team;
• For new gTLD innovation on a $50 Million ROI project, I will need an hour of your time to explain how your application can change how consumers search on Internet.
• I will also be able to operate and monitor large domain name portfolios on both the Registrar or the Registrant's side (as a Registrar's client).

I have the experience from the first round of the ICANN new gTLD program and also worked for major Registrars (retail and Corporate) and Registries. I am based in Paris, France.

My details are available here.