Total new gTLD registrations have been on a downhill slide since late September 2020 according to nTLDstats.com and the decline is continuing. Verisign’s authorative Domain Name Industry Brief released this week reports that in the final quarter of 2020, new gTLD domain name registrations dropped 4.2 million to 26.0 million which equates to a drop of 13.8% compared to the third quarter of 2020. Over the year new gTLDs decreased by 3.3 million or 11.2%.
The .xyz has regained the number one new gTLDs crown after some weeks of declines by .top, mirroring the decline of .xyz. The latest statistics from nTLDstats.com show .xyz with 2.543 million registrations and .top with 2.538 million.
In January 2017 .top peaked at 4.787 million registrations and registrations have steadily declined to today’s figure. A few weeks ago the statistics showed there were over a million pending deletes, and that figure today is around 494,000, meaning domains under management are set to slide even further.
For .xyz though, they’ve finished their huge decline and over the last 2 months have seen registrations increase by over 90,000. But this followed a not un-expected collapse after registrations peaked at 6.775 million in December 2016 and then collapsed in January and February to 6.587 million, rose erratically to 6.722 million and then collapsed again in August, losing 3 million DUM in just over 2 weeks as domain names weren’t renewed.
The third largest of the new generic top level domains, .loan, is sitting on 2.160 million registrations with only 14,400 domains, for now, sitting in pending delete. The rest of the top 10 is .club (1.177 million), .win (1.057m), .online (778,000), .vip (767,000), .wang (660,000), .site (544,000) and .bid (526,000).
Going forward for .xyz, for the short term, expect to see a moderate increase while .loan can see further losses as many of the pending deletes aren’t renewed.
Minds + Machines has just had 4 more of its 27 new gTLDs approved for use in China, adding to the prior approval for .vip. This now makes 5 of its extensions approved by the Chinese government regulator, MIIT – .vip, .law, .work, .beer and .è´ç©(shopping) – with a further four currently still going through the MIIT approval process.
The Company will announce the release schedule on the newly approved top level domains for the Chinese market in due course.
Commenting on the approval, MMXâs Chief Executive, Toby Hall, speaking on the domain industry at Alibaba event ‘The Computing Conference’ in Hangzhou, regularly attended by over 40,000 delegates, said:
“We are greatly honoured to be the first western registry to receive a second round of approvals from MIIT. China accounts for over half of global registrations in new gTLDs and from a revenue perspective it is important for the Company to have a dominant position in this market.”
MMXâs 27 new gTLDs have almost 1.095 million domains under management, the largest being .vip with 762,000 followed by .work with 116,000 and .london with 75,000 according to nTLDstats.
Another new gTLD registry, Radix, also had 4 of their new gTLDs approved for use in China according to a Domain Incite report. Their new gTLDs to get the nod were .fun, .online, .store and .tech.
Additionally, this week saw the General Availability launch of .boston. The new generic top level domain launched on 10 October and saw over 2,000 registrations being made in the first six hours and approximately $100,000 of billings already booked. According to nTLDstats, registrations are now over 2,150.
Overall .xyz has lost over 2.5 million registrations in the last 2 weeks, dropping from 5.587 million to 3.063 million since 10 August. And there are still another 693,000 listed in “upcoming deletes”. .xyz peaked at 6.756 million registrations on 6 December 2016 before going on a bit of a rollercoaster ride. Then the results of the discounted promotion the registry ran at the end of May 2016 came into play where 3.251 million domain names were registered in just 3 days.
And it’s not that .top hasn’t been immune to a bit of a decline, but it’s nothing like .xyz’s. .top peaked at 4.787 million on 12 January this year and has been on a decline ever since to today’s 3.277 million.
Others to have noticeable declines in the top 10 by registration numbers are .win which peaked at 1.297 million registrations on 1 December 2016 and today has 1.038 million, .vip, with a peak of 851,600 on 4 August to today’s 777,900, .wang which peaked at 1.120 million on 3 March and today stands at 663,500, .site which peaked at 729,200 on 1 May and today stands at 535,600, .bid which peaked at 619,600 on 17 January and today stands at 493,300.
Today registrations for the 1,226 new generic top level domains to have been delegated by ICANN stands at 23.984 million, down from the heady days of 4 April 2017 when registrations stook at 29.423 million, a decline of over 5.4 million, and 2.780 in just the last 2 weeks. Of these new gTLDs, around 540 are for brands, which account for around 7,200 domains according to research published by the Dot Brand Observatory.
As we previously reported, there are some of the new generic top level domains that have defied the massive declines. One is .club which has maintained registrations just above the one million mark since 30 June, and today stand at 1.102 million. The gTLD has had a few troughs but has not been affected by such massive declines, which largely must have to do with the lack of free or discounted domains. Another with a fairly stable number of registrations is .loan which passed the 2 million registrations mark in April and today has 2.169 million registrations.
There are currently 5 new gTLDs with more than one million registrations, 9 with more than 500,000 and 33 with more than 100,000.
Registrations among new gTLDs aren’t in freefall, but numbers continue to drop as registrations come up for renewal and, for some, following heavily discounted promotions, registrants aren’t renewing.
Registrations were 26,770,640 across the 1,226 new gTLDs to have been delegated by ICANN as of 25 July according to nTLDstats.com, the lowest they’ve been since 28 November last year when there were 26,692,986 registrations. In the intervening period registrations have had some ups and downs, but they peaked at 29,431,088 on 14 April and it’s mostly been a downhill slide since.
A large part of the decline has been .xyz, which peaked at 6,756,335 on 6 December and today after a couple of huge drops are now at 5,606,348. By today I mean registrations at the close of 25 July. .top is another to have dropped noticeably, having peaked at 4,786,757 and today registrations sit at 3,545,386. Together these 2 new generic top level domains account for just over a third (34.18) of all new gTLD registrations. Both of these new gTLDs also have huge numbers of domains listed as “upcoming deletes” – 2,084,750 and 385,734 for .xyz and .top respectively.
Of the top 10 by registration numbers today, another to have seen registrations drop dramatically is .win which peaked at 1,297,360 and today registrations stand at 1,036,413, .wang which peaked at 1,120,100 on 2 March and today stand at 657,545, .site which peaked at 729,188 and now stands at 531,959 and .bid which peaked at 619,902 on 13 January and today sits at 469,595.
It’s been a rough and tumble time as discounted promotions end. Quite a few of those, if not all, that have seen significant declines, have a large presence in China. But in total, the proportion of registrants to Chinese registrants, largely domain investors, has risen. On 28 November last year there were 7,314,451 new gTLD domain names registered to Chinese registrants, increasing to 12,553,212 today. Currently 46.89% of all registrations are to Chinese registrants. Another 23.06% (6,174,648) use Whois proxy services, which means most likely over half of all new gTLD registrations are Chinese.
One new gTLD that has largely defied drops has been .club. One reason for .club not suffering the drops like others in the top 10 is they’ve not had any discounted promotions. Registrations have grown gradually to 1,094,972
Total new gTLD registrations have taken a hit in recent days, dropping over half a million in under 2 weeks.
Total domains under management for the 1,218 new generic top level domains to have been delegated by ICANN peaked at 29.330 million on 14 April and have dropped to 28.803 million on 26 April, according to nTLDstats.com.
Those to have dropped big numbers of registrations were .xyz, the largest of the new gTLDs, which peaked at 6.651 million registrations on 20 March, had dropped to 6.594 million on 14 April and on 26 April had 6.208 million. Others in the top 10 by registration numbers to have shed registrations were .top, down from 4.509 million on 14 April to 4.477 million on 25 April, .club from 885,000 (14 April) to 852,000 (25 April).
The reasons for the declines don’t appear readily apparent. For .xyz they had over 3 million registrations in 3 days during a big promotion, but this was in early June 2016. For the other gTLDs that have suffered drops there are no significant registration jumps one or 2 years ago.
The Chinese government’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has given official approval for the .club, .vip and .xyz new gTLDs meaning they can now apply for relevant local licenses to be hosted within the country. Previously only .com and .net operated by Verisign had this official approval.It’s a hugely significant opportunity for the three new generic Top Level Domains as previously registrants were required to host their domain names in these gTLDs outside the country. China already accounts for at least 40% and possibly around half of all registrations for all new gTLDs. However one probable trade-off is that the Chinese government can order domain names, and hosted websites, to be deleted it doesn’t approve of.The three gTLDs are among the top ten when it comes to registration numbers. According to nTLDstats.com, .xyz is the largest with 6.671 million registrations while .club is the fifth largest (881,300) and .vip ninth (531,500) accounting for almost 3 in 10 (29.89%) of all registrations.China’s significance can be shown by it accounting for a growing number of registrations, both for new gTLDs and legacy gTLDs, particularly short domains and even more so short numeric domains, and all three new gTLDs having offices there.While there are almost twice as many .cn domains registered within China than .com – around 20 million .cn compared to 11 million .com, .com domains attract higher premiums from investors according to the Coreile Letter blog with .com being considered a “door to the world [for] a Chinese enterprise, and every Chinese company aspires to have a ‘grand’ entrance.”Additionally, many numbers rhyme with Chinese characters. Coreile gives the example of “520” that “rhymes with (sounds like) the Chinese characters 我愛你 (I love you), which is perfect for a dating website.” And the third reason given by Coreile is that Chinese companies like to use acronyms for their domains, practice not as common for western companies. “For example, Jing Dong upgraded from JingDong.com (and 360buy.com) to JD.com and Zhu Ba Jie from Zhubajie.com to ZBJ.com. This is possible because these acronym names correspond to the fully spelled out Pinyin names. In other words, Chinese consumers have no difficulty remembering either an acronym name or its fully spelled out Pinyin name.”According to nTLDstats.com, there are almost 12 million (11.910 million) domain names registered to registrants within China out of 27.015 million across the 1,209 new gTLDs that have been delegated, however there are also 7.390 million domains that the registrant is unknown, usually through the use of Whois proxy services. There is only one additional country that accounts for over one million registrations – the USA (2.707m).For .club, the registry saw China as a huge opportunity even before their launch, regularly visiting the country since January 2014, months before its official launch. Since then they’ve seen significant growth in registrations from domain investors in China with more than 400,000 domains having been registered there and more than US$2 Million in .CLUB premium name sales made to Chinese investors. They are now one of only five formal government licenses for foreign domains so will be eligible for ICP (Internet Content Provider) numbers. An ICP number is required for every website hosted in mainland China.”The Chinese market is extremely important to us, and we’ve worked very hard at understanding how the regulatory system there works and how we can work with the government as it evolves,” said CEO, Colin Campbell. “We’re very proud to be among the first foreign domain name registries approved. While we’ve already enjoyed some success in China, we now look forward to expanding the reach and popularity of .CLUB to the many businesses and entrepreneurs developing their online presence in China. Being an approved registry opens the door to great expansion for us in the Chinese market.”The word “club” in English is widely used and recognised in China by existing clubs and small businesses, making .club a logical and meaningful domain extension. With over 140 million .com and .net names and nearly 20 million .cn names already registered, businesses looking for good, brandable names are looking further afield for new choices such as the .club new generic Top Level Domain.Likewise MMX, operator of the .vip new gTLD, was very pleased, with CeO Toby Hall saying the “MIIT approval is a major milestone for MMX and the continued successful development of our dot VIP domain. We share the China domain industry’s opinion that regulatory approval will provide for another wave of top-level domain growth in the region. Influential Chinese registrars will now be able to market this select group of approved new gTLDs more actively to the important local Chinese SME end-market for usage. We are deeply honoured to be one of only three registries to be approved in this first round of approvals.”
Rightside have rejected the Donuts cash offer of $70 million for its entire registry of new generic Top Level Domains “after careful consideration and in consultation with its independent financial and legal advisors”.Partly explaining their rejection, Rightside noted in a news release the “registry business that Donuts has proposed to acquire is the cornerstone of the company’s long-term target model.” The company is targeting annual registry revenue over the next three to five years of between $50 and $75 million. In their most recent financial announcement covering the first quarter of 2016, Rightside said their registry services revenue grew 64 percent to $2.6 million.Currently Rightside have 40 new gTLDs delegated with all but one having entered General Availability and registrations approaching 546,000, or 2.38 percent of all domains registered in new gTLDs, according to nTLDstats.com.The largest new gTLD registry operator by new gTLDs is Donuts with 194 and by registration numbers is xyz.com with over 6.476 million registrations, the largest being .xyz with over 6.458 million.Only time will tell if the Donuts offer is testing the waters and a subsequent higher offer comes in the near future.”Rightside’s Registry business is core to the Company’s strategy and provides the best opportunity to deliver long-term shareholder value. After thoughtful evaluation, Rightside’s Board has determined that Donuts’ proposal significantly undervalues Rightside’s Registry assets,” said Taryn Naidu, CEO of Rightside. “We believe Donuts’ proposal is an opportunistic attempt to acquire Rightside’s valuable portfolio of domain extensions with an undervalued price and in a manner that would not be in the best interests of Rightside shareholders.”Naidu added, “The Board and management are aligned on a clear strategy – building Rightside’s position as a leading domain name company that specializes in delivering new possibilities for consumers and businesses to define and present themselves online. We operate broad distribution assets and have acquired an outstanding portfolio of 40 new gTLDs that map to extremely large addressable markets and the culturally transformative activities that have shaped the world’s use of the Internet. We are well-positioned for growth.””Rightside and its shareholders have many reasons to be excited about the Company’s future opportunities. We remain confident that we have the right people, technology and products to continue to execute on our strategy and maximize shareholder value.”
The number of .vip domain registrations grew 49 percent in the three days from 3 to 6 June, the registry announced.
As of 16:00 UTV on 6 June there were 404,892 registrations which would mean the gTLD would sit seventh on the nTLDstats.com list of new gTLDs when it is updated.
The gTLD has been a financial boon for the Minds + Machines Group with billings and orders received since its launch on 17 May 2016 now exceeding US$5.5 million.
“The exceptional take-up we are seeing of .vip is being achieved without using a freemium strategy or equivalent to boost numbers – the latest surge coming from standard name registrations bought through the registrar channel,” said Toby Hall, CEO of MMX. “This bodes well for renewal rates and the long-term reputation of the domain. We very much look forward to the ongoing growth of .vip billings.”
.VIP was awarded “China’s Most Welcomed New gTLD 2016” at the Global Domain Summit in Hangzhou this weekend MMX announced. Both the Summit and .VIP are new to China, with .VIP being born only 17 days before the major new domain investment conference was staged for the first time. The award, granted by the largest gathering of Chinese domain name investors and professionals in history, beat out more than 1,000 other new gTLDs currently delegated to the internet. .VIP has also been awarded the Outstanding Performer in the Chinese IDC industry at HostingCon China.
The Chinese domain investors have taken to the new gTLD market and of the 21.442 million domains registered across the 1,025 new gTLDs that have been delegated, account for 10.116 million registrations where the registrant is known or 47.18 percent of the market. The registrant is unknown in 17.06 percent of registrations while the USA accounts for 10.04 percent, Cayman Islands 6.52 percent and Germany 2.48 percent.
For .vip while the numbers aren’t known, Chinese registrars account for around 90 percent of all registrations indicating Chinese registrants are dominating the gTLD’s registrations.
The heavily discounted promotion for .xyz’s second birthday certainly paid dividends when it comes to registration numbers with the gTLD rocketing to 5.612 million registrations, according to nTLDstats.com. Four days ago there on 31 May there were 2.920 million registrations.But the value of the .xyz promotion in financial terms is negligible to the registry, particularly for the next 12 Which means that it has now made it into the top ten TLDs globally and has around twice the number of registrations of the second largest of the new gTLDs, .top, which has 2.552 million registrations. The tenth largest TLD was .info, as of the end of 2015 and according to RegistrarStats.com today has 5.510 million registrations.On the back of the massive jump in registrations, total new gTLD registrations surged almost 2.7 million from 18.319 million on 31 May to 21.122 million on 4 June.months. And as has been seen in previous heavily discounted promotions for new gTLDs, the renewal rate is very low. But then, even if only a small percentage of registrations renew, then it could be considered successful. And who knows, the registry may well have another discounted promotion for its third birthday.The above post was updated to reflect an extra 24 hours of domain registrations, mainly due to another surge in registrations for .xyz.
