ICANN’s last new gTLD application closed in 2012 with more than 600 brands applying for their dot brand.

Dot brand domains associate a keyword or keyphrase and a brand name in a complete domain name. ‘Environment.google’ is a dot brand domain, where environment is the keyword but also the second-level domain name, and Google is the brand name and the top-level domain.

To understand better how the evolution of the dotBrand has been throughout these years, number of websites launched, redirects, registries etc, Dot Brand Observatory prepared a few visual graphics.

Figure 1 is a chart that represents the total number of second level domains registered, split by type of content and setup of the domain. The green curve corresponds to the growth of actual websites. As of end August 2017, there were 890 published dot brand websites. The sites are enjoying regular growth.

The blue area corresponds to the branded links: Domains that redirect to another site.

The grey area are domains that were registered but not properly setup.

Figure 2 is a chart that represents the brand registries. The number is slightly decreasing by now as a few brands decided to withdraw their TLD.

The green curve again corresponds to the growth of dot brand who published at least one actual websites, who is also growing.

The blue area corresponds to the TLD that registered at least one domain name—beyond the mandatory nic.brand domain.

Approximately one half of the brand registries are live, but dormant—no dot brand domain was registered.

To learn more about dot brand domains, how they are used and activated, you can consider joining our Brands & Domains conference, which will take place at the Amrath Kurhaus in The Hague, Netherlands 2nd and 3rd of October.