Are international strings such as “club” and “rugby” the key to launch a successful TLD in Round 2 of the ICANN new gTLD program? Are “International TLDs” the key to a successful Registry?

That is quite possible as the results of the recent .CLUB launching show that it generated lots of interest in a short period of time. The .CLUB registry is now number 3 on the list of most registered domain names with 37,806 domains registered and .EMAIL is in position 6.

But is it just a matter of being generic, multi-linguistic, short and global? We do not think so because a TLD like RUGBY would then focus on one single sport and a question to have could be: “you would be s Rugby Club: which domain name would you register?” As a French-speaking person, I would probably go for a myclub.rugby because “rugby” would come after the name of my club in a sentence but as an English-speaking person wouldn’t I choose the opposite?

A list of strings

At gTLD.club, we searched for “International Keywords” and surprisingly, there are not so many. So instead of publishing our list of strings with a strong potential for the second round of applications, we found this page at Wikipedia. We wouldn’t be surprised that all applicants for generic strings checked that page a very long time ago but here is another list we extracted from Ogden’s Basic English:

“academy, academic, accumulator, adieu, alphabet, alpha, ampere, apostrophe, atlas, atmosphere, atom , baby, bacillus, balcony, banana, banjo, barbarism, baritone, bayonet, benzyl, bicycle, billiards, blonde, blouse, bonbon, boss, bouquet, boulevard, bourgeois, brave, bridge, buffet, bulletin, bull-dog, cable, cafeteria, cadet, calico, camouflage, caravan, card, carnival, catastrophe, caviar, center, chaos, civilization, cocoa, communist, condenser, contralto, cosmopolitan, crepe, cricket, crochet, dahlia, decadent, demagogue, dessert, diarrhea, dictionary, dilettante, dynamo, dyspepsia, economic, electric, electron, element, energy, ensemble, erotic, eucalyptus, eugenics, façade, feminism, film, fresco, flirt, freemason, frieze, garage, gazette, gentleman, golf, gondola, grammar, graph, guillotine, gymnastics, hockey, hor d’oeuvres, hyacinth, imperial, impromptu, intelligentsia, interest, iodine, kangaroo, laboratory, lacquer, lady, lamp, lancet, lavatory, league, legal, lemon, lion, lunch, lynch, machine, mademoiselle, magnet, mannequin, manuscript, mash, maximum, memo, menthol, minimum, minus, modern, monopoly, monsieur, moral, morphia, motif, motor, music, muslin, narcissus, nature, negro, nuance, oasis, obelisk, octave, option, optimism, oracle, palace, palette, panic, panorama, paradox, parallel, parasol, parody, pathos, pessimism, philosophy, phonetics, photograph, picnic, pince-nez, ping-pong, pistol, plus, polo, porridge, pragmatism, press, prima-donna, professor, profile, proletariat, promenade, public, pudding, realism, register, rendezvous, republic, revue, rhetoric, rhythm, robot, rotor, roulette, rucksack, sabotage, sago, salon, saloon, sapphire, satyr, saxophone, scenario, schema, scout, serenade, sextant, shampoo, shellac, silhouette, ski, socialism, soirée, solo, soprano, soufflé, souvenir, spectrum, sphinx, staccato, stadium, station, steppe, student, symbolism, symmetry, symphony, synchronization, syndicalism, syntax, syringe, system, tango, technique, technology, tempo, tennis, tenor, text, theory, thermometer, toilet, tomato, tournament, tragedy, tramway, transformer, turban, turbine, typhoon, tsar, unicorn, universe, utopia, vaudeville, verandah, vermouth, waffle, waltz, whist, xylophone, zigzag”.

Some of these keywords could be applied to in the second round of ICANN new gTLDs but what about this round: what about those strings which have already been applied to and which correspond to commonly used words? We checked the list on Godaddy’s website so we could extract .BRAND TLDs which are also considered as generic strings but which are not available for sale (domain names end users won’t be able to buy). Here is a list domain name extensions we believe could become successful in terms of use and registration volumes (we excluded geographic TLDs):

.boutique
.buzz
.camera
.club
.cool
.email
.marketing
.expert
.pub
.business
.wiki
.global
.forum
.news
.coupon
.photo
.taxi
.shop
.science
.education
.restaurant
.pizza
.international
.casino
.bio
.auto
.hotel
.(contact)
.fan
.latino
.luxe
.sex
.poker
.vip
.social
(.style)
.art
.radio
(.media)
.film
(.video)
.finance
.cash
.legal
.baseball
.basketball
.football
(.cricket)
.golf
.rugby
.sport
.app
.tennis
.surf
(.yoga)
(.date)
(.digital)
.download
.webcam
.web

These strings, for the largest part, are keywords used in various languages such as French, English and Spanish. You will notice many strings are sports keywords.