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I went through the exciting exercise of checking all March 2019 new gTLD reports to extract which domain name extension shows an interesting learning curve (or something strange happening). This is what I noticed for the 20 categories of TLDs:
1) In the list of new gTLDs for Politics, the first new gTLD to have been delegated from the ICANN new gTLD program— .GURU (63,000)—lost 2,000 registrations since January 2018 (not 2019). I was very excited to grab one when it launched, but I dropped it then. Globally speaking, these extensions, some being negative, don’t attract consumers so much.
2) In Luxury, the .VIP (840,000) and .BEST (12,000) Top-Level Domains keep growing but surprisingly, many .BRAND new gTLDs like .GUCCI, .CHANEL or .CARTIER seem to have found no use of their extension yet.
3) In Music, the .LIVE new gTLD goes up with 332,000 registrations and increasing but .PARTY seems to die little by little. The .BAND and .DANCE new gTLD have an interesting progression curve: they’ve kept growing in volume since January 2018.
4) Multiple Registries operate more than 5 new gTLDs: Donuts, Radix and Google are growing in volume significantly.
5) Singular or Plural? Some of these extensions are clearly failures. Is it so because they exist in two versions and no one would invest in such a risk? That’s my opinion, but I also know that most registrant, when registering one of these domains, don’t necessarily know about the existence of a second version of the extension. I call these a trap. I think that the .HOTEL, when it launches, will make sense for a hotel.
6) The Catering report shows that the .FOOD new gTLD has now 6 registrations instead of one in January and February: will it launch soon?
7) In photography, the .ART new gTLD stands out of the crowd with a very interesting learning curve: it has more than 50,000 registrations today.
8) City name new gTLDs are a little disappointing but Japanese cities like .TOKYO (first city to have more than 100,000 domain names registered), .NAGOYA and .OKINAWA grew in March 2019.
9) The listing dedicated to companies keeps showing that I was not wrong about on the new gTLDs that companies should register their domain name with. Some of them I would not buy but basically, all are growing in volume.
10) In “Law and Justice”, not many TLDs and not much is happening.
11) The Finance report is an interesting one for .BRAND new gTLDs, it is the opposite of the Luxury report: many brands are using their TLD and registering dozens of domain names.
12) Colors: there are 6 of them and one is a Trademark: .BLUE, .PINK and .GREEN are growing slowly below 10,000 registrations.
13) In Sports, the .YOGA, .RUN and .FITNESS have kept growing since January 2019. Owner of the .NIKE new gTLD published a job offer, let’s hope that part of the role will be to develop the TLD.
14) Alcohol: guess what: .WINE, .BEER and .VODKA grow in volume: slowly but they grow.
15) The Real Estate report is a long one and 3 new gTLDs are of interest in March: the .REALESTATE, .CASA (house in Spanish) and .HOMES
16) In French new gTLD applications, .BRAND extensions are truly used and many domains are being registered.
17) None of the religious TLDs are of interest in March and .WED (for “wedding”) remains silent.
18) None of the TLDs dedicated to the automotive industry has more than 10,000 registrations. Surprisingly, some .BRANDs have more registrations than some generic TLDs dedicated to selling domain names to the general public through the network of accredited registrars! The .AUDI new gTLD registered more than 1,330 domains already.
19) The .HEALTH and .DOCTOR are growing in volume below the 10,000 registrations and .BRANDs are still searching a use for their TLD.
All new gTLD reports are available here.
Note that I often use “new gTLDs”, “Top-Level-Domains”, “TLDs” or “domain name extensions” not to make these publications too boring. Also, some TLDs listed and losing traction month after month belong to the same multiple registries.
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