New Domain Name Study: China More Advanced

Elliot Silver
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0

Sedo shared the results of a study it conducted to gauge awareness about the new gTLD domain names by people in several countries. Sedo published the results of its “International TLD Awareness Report” on its website (pdf), and I thought I would share some of the key themes from the study that were published and shared with me this morning.

Keep in mind that this was a broad study, but it wasn’t huge, as it “queried more than 1,150 individuals from the United States, United Kingdom, China and Germany.” I don’t know if the study was conducted by a third party company, nor do I know if these participants were pre-qualified in any way (ie domain name owners or general Internet users for example).

U.S. Key Themes

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Poll: Will .com “Lose Dominance” by 2020?

Elliot Silver
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18

There’s an interesting article in The Telegraph today that discusses domain names and cites a report from NetNames.  From the article:

“According to NetNames’ Internet 2020 report, 92 per cent of large companies in the US, Britain, France and Germany are planning to invest in new domain names over the next three years, and 46 per cent say they already have begun to invest in this area.

Although .com will remain popular, registrations of new domain names will significantly overtake new registrations of .com and .net, as these established domains become saturated, according to NetNames.“

I haven’t seen or read the NetNames report (and I don’t see where the report can be downloaded), but I would certainly say this prediction is provocative.

I am unsure if the prediction is that there will

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What if McDonalds’ WC Gol Ad Used .MCD gTLD?

Elliot Silver
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9

If you have been watching the 2014 World Cup matches in Brazil, you have likely seen the McDonalds advertisement the company has been running on the pitch sideboards. McDonalds is directing viewers to a special World Cup website found on a subdomain of its website: Gol.mcd.com.

When I first saw this campaign, my initial thought was “I wonder if they bought golmcd.com” to avoid losing traffic to this possible typo. They did not, and it appears that someone else bought it on June 2.

I was on Twitter yesterday, when I read Christopher Hofman’s tweet. Because McDonald’s applied for the .MCD gTLD extension, it may have been possible for McDonalds to use gol.mcd for this advertisement had it been available. Here’s the tweet I am referencing:

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GoDaddy Promoting New Domain Names in TV Commercial

Elliot Silver
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8

GoDaddy has two new television commercials that are promoting the gTLD domain name extensions to the general public, with the target audience being SMBs. As you can see when you view the two minute video embedded below, the focus of this GoDaddy commercial is the “brand new, more personalized domain names.”

According to Elizabeth Driscoll, ‎Vice President of Public Relations at GoDaddy, “one and two minute versions of the commercial are airing on cable television – channels like CNN, Fox News, Sundance, History and many more.”

This is a good example of how much the marketing emphasis has changed during the past couple of years.

Giving Away Domain Names; Does it Help?

Joe Alagna
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4

Publisher’s Note: After learning about the .Berlin free domain name offer (now discontinued), I reached out to 101Domain’s Joe Alagna to discuss the strategy of giving gTLD domain names for free. Some people speculate that it is a bad sign for the gTLD program, and I asked Joe to share his insight.

The .berlin registry rocketed to near the top in new gTLDs this week by offering their domain names for free for a limited time. .Berlin was already off to a good start. They went into General Availability in March, 2014. Over thirty thousand were registered within the first few days and then registrations leveled off to an average of fifty or one-hundred per day. With the free offer in place, they added close to seventy-thousand registrations, bringing their total Domains Under Management (DUM) to over 138,000 and making them the second most popular new gTLD to be released in the past year. I’ve been asked, “does this help?” I think the answer depends on who one is thinking of. Let me start by talking about registrants.

Do TLD Give-aways Help Registrants?

Of course they

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Architelos: Its About Usage, Renewals and Quality Domains

Elliot Silver
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1

Architelos is a company that “offers strategic consulting and managed services for new and existing TLDs.” I believe the company’s executives have experience working with legacy TLD registries as well as some of the new gTLD registries.

This morning, I saw a tweet that Architelos posted on its account, and I think it is one worth noting.

 

Numbers are important, but from my perspective they are probably not the most important thing when it comes to the new extensions, and there are other factors that should be considered as well (like usage, renewal rates, awareness…etc). Additionally, we are in the early stages of the new gTLD program right now, and there are many more new extensions that will be coming out soon.

I do not know what registries Architelos works with now or with whom they are consulting, so I can’t comment on whether or not the tweet may be self-interested, however, I think it is a good point.

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