We have just released the 2025 edition of the DOTZON study “Digital City Brands.” Since first presenting the study in early 2017, DOTZON has now analyzed for the ninth consecutive year how cities successfully use their Digital City Brands. The Digital City Brand represents the digital aspect of a city’s brand and reflects how digitally advanced a city is. The emergence of the Internet was the reason Digital City Brands were created in the first place. Since then, city brands complement communications not only in the analog world but also in the digital space. However, the Digital City Brand is much more than just an extension of the traditional city branding. It plays a key role in strengthening the relationship between a city and its stakeholders in the digital space. In addition, the Digital City Brand encourages dialogue between the city and its residents, positions the city as an attractive destination in global competition, and presents local offerings and services under a unified brand.

Major European capitals such as Berlin, Paris, and London were pioneers in establishing their own Digital City Brands. Soon after, other global cities like Tokyo, New York, Sydney, and Rio de Janeiro followed this trend. Today, most Digital City Brands are widely embraced by residents, businesses, and city administrations alike. Collectively, these cities are home to over 110 million people and have a combined gross domestic product with app. 13 billion US dollars. The Digital City Brands study is based on analyzing 35 cities worldwide with their own digital identity on the Internet—the so-called city top-level domain (cityTLDs). Taken together, they have 40 Digital City Brands, as five cities operate in two cityTLDs.

Sources for the underlying data of this study are eight key performance indicators (KPIs):

• The number of registered domain names
• The annual sales volume
• The number of active domain names
• The number of pages per TLD listed at Google
• The number of domains listed in the Majestic and other visibility rankings (Tranco)
• The number of domain names per 1,000 inhabitants
• The gross domestic product per domain name
• A comparison between the cityTLD and the national top-level domain (ccTLD)

The figures used are all from public databases and local parameters specific to a city.

The study “Digital City Brands 2025” allows a head-to-head comparison of all cities with their own digital identities. The study shows that the German cityTLD .berlin again reached first place. It is followed by .tokyo in second place and .hamburg in third place. This means that the northern German city brand not only makes it into the top 10, but also into the top 3 for the first time. The TLDs .sydney and .okinawa are no longer in the top 10, however, reaching 18th and 12th place this year. The TLDs .wien and .gent are back in the top 10, having reached 13th and 14th place respectively last year. In summary, the trend that Digital City Brands are developing very positively, particularly in Europe, has continued: Seven of the top 10 rankings are occupied by European metropolises.

Digital City Brands Ranking 2024

1st place: .berlin

This year, .berlin once again takes the top spot. The .berlin extension was the first cityTLD ever to be made available to the general public. In most ranking categories, .berlin consistently achieves very good results. In particular, the placements in the three KPIs “number of registered domains” with almost 45,000 domains, ‘Turnover’ and “Tranco ranking” with 38 domains were decisive for the top placement.

2nd place: .tokyo

The city extension .tokyo, operated by the Tokyo-based company GMO, has once again achieved second place. With a good 99,000 domains, .tokyo is still the cityTLD with the most registered domains, and it also achieved the top position in the KPI “Revenue”. In the Tranco Rank, .tokyo also achieved the top position with 113 listed domains.

3rd place: .hamburg

After fourth place last year, .hamburg was able to improve again this year, reaching third place this year. With consistently good rankings in the top 5 and top 10 KPIs, .hamburg has developed very well, for example in the Google ranking, number of active domains and turnover of the city brand.

4th place: .brussels

After an excellent third place last year, the Belgian capital achieved fourth place this year. Second place for the KPI “Pages on Google” contributed to the ranking. It also came third for the KPI “Domains per inhabitant”. A good ranking in the comparison of the city brand with the national ending .be also contributes to the good result once again.

5th place: .koeln

From eighth place last year, .koeln was able to move up three places to 5th place this year. A figure of just under 17 domains per 1,000 inhabitants and the good registration figures of 18,158 domains contributed to the good ranking. Once again, .koeln took the top spot in the “gross national product per domain” category, contributing to the success of the cityTLD.

6th place: .amsterdam

The Dutch ending .amsterdam once again achieved sixth place this year. Good rankings in the KPIs number of domains and turnover are decisive for this. Just under 21 domains per 1,000 inhabitants and a large number of registered domains despite the low gross national product complete the good ranking in the top 10.

7th place: .nyc

Since its launch in 2014, the city extension .nyc has become a digital home for many New Yorkers. Compared to the previous year, it has dropped two places and is in 7th place this year. The reason for the good ranking is the very good positions in the KPIs number of domains - just under 58,000 - and the high turnover. In the Tranco Rank KPI, .nyc achieved a very good result with 3rd place and 45 listed domains.

8th place: .wien

After a two-year break in the top 10, .wien has moved straight into eighth place. The 8th place is mainly due to the good ranking in the KPIs “turnover”, the more than 15,000 domains ensure the good position in the KPI “number of registered domains”.

9th place: .vegas

After a seventh place last year, .vegas is in ninth place this year. A seventh place in the KPI “Domains per 1,000 inhabitants” contributed to this position. The second place in popularity of the .vegas extension ahead of the .us extension rounds off the good results.

10th place: .gent

After a five-year break in the top 10, .gent once again achieved tenth place this year, as it did in 2019. .gent is the frontrunner in the top 10 in terms of the “Active domains” KPI. The third-best ranking for the KPI “Pages on Google” also contributes to the good position, as does the high registration rate despite the low GDP.

“In the wild” - examples of a great usage of a cityTLD

City marketing managers like to take advantage of a short domain for location-based marketing campaigns, which is often already taken under the national ending or only available with hyphens. The new addresses are short and concise, such as umweltkalender.berlin, pressefreiheit.hamburg, mail.zuerich and godman.stockholm.translator

Digital city brands are ideal for tourism offers, as they increase visibility in search engines for local search queries and enable memorable, thematically relevant web addresses. It establishes a clear connection to the city and thus creates trust and identification among potential participants. Providers around the world are taking advantage of this effect. These include parkguell.barcelona, miniport.istanbul, greeters.paris, riotur.rio and partybusse.berlin.

Digital city brands are particularly well suited to communicating local events, as they enable immediate and clear identification with the respective city. Users recognize at a glance that it is a local offer, which creates trust and appeals specifically to the target group. This effect is used by the organizers of green-connect.hamburg, icc.moscow, strong.madrid, rising.melbourne and ki-festival.berlin.

Outlook

The areas of digitization, sustainability, and e-government will continue to be the driving forces behind the development of cities. The infrastructure of cityTLDs plays an important role here: It enables cities to communicate with their stakeholders and serves as a digital tool for location marketing and branding. We expect that more cities will use their cityTLDs even more intensively in the future so that we can present an update next year.

The study is availabe for download at https://dotzon.consulting/studien.