Brands are using their new gTLDs more often with the latest CSC New gTLD Utilisation Report showing there are now 85 active .brands, that is those with more than five registrations. The report notes there are now 373 .brand gTLDs now delegated in the root zone (an increase of 16% since the last report), and there are regularly more .brand websites being launched or redirected to existing websites with participation across all industries.

The industry with the most .brand gTLDs is finance and money with 12 active .brands followed by construction, engineering and equipment (10) and internet services (7). The .brand with the most registrations is .中信/.citic (Chinese multi-industry conglomerate) with 319 domains followed by those gun-loving nutters at America’s National Rifle Association (.nra with 147), then Seat (cars – 98), .bnpparibas (French bank – 93) and .bradesco (Brazilian financial services provider – 90).

There are 27 .brands with an Alexa ranking, an increase of over a third (35%) since the last report in February and 9.986 new gTLDs with an Alexa ranking in the top one million results, an increase of 30 percent in two months.

CSC have also developed their “alternative top ten” ranking that considers Alexa rankings alongside the gTLD’s registration volume. Here seven remained the same (.media, .today, .sexy, .news, .life, .global, and .space). The new entrants to the list are .press, .online, and .guru. Although, .social didn’t make the cut because it isn’t in the top 100 by registrations volume, it still has an Indicator score of 46 which would have put it seventh.

To download the report in full, go to:
www.digitalbrandinsider.com/cscs-new-gtld-utilization-report-april-2016/

There are now at least 75 brands to have launched their new gTLDs, with five or more registrations, compared to 53 in October, according to the latest CSC New gTLD Utilization Report [pdf].The report covers the period 24 November to 3 December and found there are 264 brand gTLDs delegated and entered into the root zone. The industry grouping with the most brand gTLDs is finance and money with 13 while technology has seven and internet services and health, pharmaceutical and healthcare both have six.The brand gTLDs with the most registrations are .中信/.citic with 291, then .nra with 146 and .bradesco, a Brazilian financial services provider, has 85.The number of brands with an Alexa ranking is also growing and there are now 18, a 13 percent increase on the previous report. And 55 percent, up from 48 percent, have properly configured DNS zone files.The report also notes “proponents of .brand domains have suggested that websites using the domains will provide Google with signals that they are authentic, and that this may influence search engine rankings.”CSC “looked at a few .brands that either have an Alexa ranking or were referenced above as new examples of .brand utilization to see which keywords they are ranking with in Google. For this set of domains, it is interesting to see that ‘registry.google,’ the domain registry website for Google, already ranks 14 for the keyword ‘domain registry’ at Google.com. Furthermore, the domain name was only recently registered, but already ranks ahead of other prominent new gTLD registries for the keyword ‘domain registry’.”The report also gives some “nice examples of new gTLD utilisation”. These are auto.glass, nespresso.club and huemor.rocks, the latter having migrated from their .com domain. Looking at China and utilisation, CSC “found that where Chinese registrants represented over 50% of the market share for the TLD (namely in .ren, .xin, .网址, .wang, .win, .top, .party, .date, .xyz, and .science), utilisation according to CSC’s Indicator score is currently very low, with the exception of .xyz.”To read the report in full, go to:
https://www.cscglobal.com/cscglobal/pdfs/CSC gTLD Report_Dec15 EN.pdf