Once a month, at the end of the month, a snapshot of domain name registration volumes is taken according to categories of new gTLDs. Twenty categories are covered and this article covers Political new gTLDs. These snapshots allow having a global overview of which extensions increase their volume of domain names registered from a month to the other, in a period of 12 months. Below is what I noticed from January 2018 to December 2018 for domain name extensions related to politics.

20 categories covered

Some domain name extensions extracted from the full list of the 1,930 ICANN new gTLD applications submitted in the first round were regrouped in categories such as “politics”, “luxury”, “music”, “catering”, “photography”, “city names”, domains dedicated to “companies”, “law and justice”, “finance”, “colors”, “sports”, “alcohol”, “real estate”, “french new gTLD applications”, “religions”, “cars and automotive”, “health” and “adults”. Two other monthly reports cover:
1) new gTLDs existing in their “singular and plural” version;
2) Group of registries operating five and more domain name extensions.

These reports include some .BRAND new gTLDs (dedicated to the exclusive use of Trademarks and some IDNs (Internationalized domain name extensions). The “Politics” new gTLD report includes eleven extensions.

12 domain name extensions for politics

1) The .DEMOCRAT new gTLD
2) .EXPOSED
3) .FAIL
4) .GIVES
5) .GRIPE
6) .GURU
7) .GOP
8) .BEST
9) .REPUBLICAN
10) .VOTE
11) .VOTING
12) .VOTO (“vote” in Spanish)

From January 2018 to December 2018

• The first thing to notice is that one extension only has more than 10,000 domain name registrations. The 11 remaining are closer to 4,000 registrations.

• Six extensions have more registrations in December 2018 than what they had in January:

1) .FAIL
2) .EXPOSED
3) .GIVES
4) .BEST
5) .GRIPE
6) .VOTO

• The .VOTE is one that should be used massively by political parties and other affiliate organizations but it accumulates less than 3,000 registrations worldwide.

• There are more “.democrat” domain name registrations than “.republican” ones.

• None of the 12 extensions kept growing from one month to the other on a 12 months period of time.

• The .GOP and .REPUBLICAN new gTLDs have less registrations in December 2018 than what they had in January from the same year.

• Surprisingly, negative extensions are successful: .FAIL - .EXPOSED and .GRIPE had more registrations in December than in January.

• The .BEST new gTLD now follows an interesting learning curve.

• The .VOTO new gTLD has 348 registrations in total.

“Volumes” are a long debate

There is a long debate on volumes of domain name created by registries: some say that “use” matters the most and that’s what drives to volumes of registrations (but this takes time); some, like “.com” domain name investors, like to focus on volumes only (and like to laugh about the ridiculous numbers of new domains created compared to “.com”). I like to focus on both because volumes matter in terms of sales when you are a registry. I believe that “use” is not enough to install a new domain name extension because volumes of domains created also allow a new gTLD to be noticed by the general public (note that domain name registration volumes can be inflated too).

Some categories of TLDs generate much more interest than politics. This is a series of articles focusing on new domain name registration volumes from the ICANN new gTLD program.