This morning I noticed that there are now 15 million registered new gTLD domain names, according to nTLDStats.com. Just a little over a week ago, I wrote an article about 14 million new gTLD domain names, and around 1 million more domain names were registered since that article was published.
The list of the 5 most registered extensions has not really changed much since the last update:
- .XYZ
- .Top
- .Wang
- .Win
- .Club
At the present time, .XYZ has a little over 17% of all new gTLD registrations with nearly 2.6 million registered .XYZ domain names. .Top, with over 1.6 million registered domain names, is the only other new domain extension that has over 1 million registered domain names.
I think the list of the top 5 registrars where new gTLD domain names are registered illustrates that the greatest demand for new gTLD domain names seems to be coming from Asia:
- Chengdu West Dimension Digital Technology Co., Ltd.
- Alpnames Limited
- GoDaddy
- eName
- GMO Internet
I still think the biggest catalyst for the registration growth is likely the low cost of domain registrations for at least several of the leading extensions. I have seen some of these extensions selling for $1 or less at various registrars. This is good for growth, but it remains to be seen what will happen at renewal time. I also believe investors are driving quite a bit of the registration growth.
Just look at this growth chart since the 10 million milestone (courtesy of nTLDStats.com):
This will likely be the last registration number update until another major milestone (such as 25 million) since the registration numbers continue to grow fairly rapidly.
I wonder what the chart looks like of end user (real companies which are branding on the domain not just a redirect or trademark protection registration) aftermarket purchases of new TLDs.
For every 1000 new TLD registrations, any guess as to how many end user aftermarket purchases we are seeing? 1% of 15 million would be 150k or nearly 3k weekly. How many nTLD sales do we see on DNJ that are not merely registry sales?
A couple observations. .NEWS has been seeing a steady stream currently ranked #28 with 66,735 registered domains. .ENERGY, while much smaller, is being registered and used by actual companies in the energy sector. The google search result generated from “site:.energy” shows a growing base of .energy companies.
A little of 75% of all these registered domains are Parked (according to nTLDStats.com), and I assume that an additional 5-10% are inactive somehow or another. As the number of new gTLDs grow at this rate, I suspect that we’ll begin to see some of them fold in the years to come.
Exciting things are happening with TLDs , no doubt, but the market is getting over-saturated quickly.
It’s way to early in the timeline to really know. We’re still at the point where if you asked 100 people on the street “What are your thoughts on the new gTLD domains?”, the response for all 100 would be “Say what?”.
I wonder what the domain market would be like today if there had never been a round of new gtld releases?
If every two to three years another TLD were added, the supply would not have mushroomed so quickly, .ME, .CO, then maybe .CLUB and later .WEB
Fifteen million domains of additional inventory when there were already maybe 16 to 18 million domains listed at SEDO.
A common response when I reach out to end users is “We already have a domain.”
In my opinion 99% of people have heard of .Com, .org and if they live outside the USA, their country code – .co.uk, .ca etc. Can anyone here imagine the marketing dollars required to bring .xyz to their attention? They could not do it with .biz, .Eu, .Asia, .Me and many more. Dot com is king, and always will be!
.Wang? Seriously?
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/wang