The .online gTLD launched its General Availability on Wednesday (26/8) and had the biggest launch day of any of the new gTLDs, surpassing that of the previous biggest launch, .club.
At the end of the first day of General Availability, according to updated figures from the registry Radix, the gTLD had 37,544 registrations, surpassing the first day registrations of .club which had 25,776. Total registrations at the end of day one including Sunrise and early access phases was 39,449.
Prior to the commencement of GA, .online had 1,905 registrations – at the end of the pre-launch Sunrise there were 775 registrations and 1,130 for the seven-day early access phase, breaking yet more records for each phase.
Registrations prior to GA had come from the auto, technology, finance, fashion and food industries. Apple had registered over 50 of these while others had come from Bank of America, Deutsche Telekom, Dow Jones & Company, Fossil, Jimmy Choo, Valentino, H&M, Google, Pandora, Paramount, Sky Entertainment and 20th Century.
âWe have seen a trend where customers select domains that are relevant and easy to remember â just like .online,â said Theresa Geraghty from GoDaddy, the worldâs largest ICANN-accredited registrar. âThe .online extension has broad appeal to a vast number of potential customers.â
âGoogleâs recent announcement on the new domain, bc.xyz, has been the ultimate validation for new domain extensions and should be a game-changer in terms of impact on the domains industry; itâs come at the perfect time with the launch of .online,â said Sandeep Ramchandani, Business Head of Radix, which has already successfully launched extensions like .press, .website and .tech among others. âWeâve seen celebrities, brands and big businesses using new domains which makes the launch of .online â an intuitive, generic term â possibly the best extension to be launched yet.â
This article was updated on 28 August to include registration information provided by Radix.