Tag Archives: .XYZ

Domain Name Registrants, Domain Name Registrars, Domain Name Registry, Domain Names

Here They Come: 4 Beauty gTLDs Plus a .QUEST Enter GA

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The XYZ Registry launched 4 beauty-related new top-level domains this week plus .quest. .Beauty, .Hair, .Skin, and .Makeup which are being aimed at independent beauty brands, influencers, big-brand cosmetic companies, salon owners, medi-spas, dermatologists, skincare specialists/aestheticians, suppliers, hair stylists, barbers, makeup artists, fashion designers and other beauty industry insiders. Plus there’s the destination-driven .Quest domain that’s being pitched at gurus, experts and enthusiasts of any field, a go-to domain for anyone seeking a specific service and/or product.

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Domain Name Registrants, Domain Name Registrars, Domain Name Registry, Domain Names

XYZ Launches .QUEST and Beauty gTLDs

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The XYZ Registry recently launched Sunrise periods for five recently acquired new gTLDs – .quest and four new gTLDs for the beauty industry – .Beauty, .Hair, .Skin and .Makeup. Registrations for trademark holders commenced 1 December while General Availability will commence on 2 March.

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Domain Name Registry, Domain Names, New gTLDs

Want To Buy A New gTLD? .CARS .CAR and .AUTO Up For Auction

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Have you ever thought of getting your own new gTLD? Well, now’s your chance. XYZ Registry and Uniregistry, joint operators of the .cars, .car and .auto new gTLDs, are putting them up for auction.

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Domain Name Registrants, Domain Name Registrars, Domain Name Registry, New gTLDs

What’s That Coming Over The Hill: Is It A .MONSTER? With A .BABY To Follow.

OK, apologies to The Automatic, but it’s come over the hill on 1 April and .monster has now launched its General Availability. It will be followed by another new gTLD relaunch from the people behind .xyz with .baby’s relaunch commencing on 2 April. Both new gTLDs were originally delegated to other parties and subsequently acquired by XYZ.COM.

XYZ.COM now has 9 new generic top-level domains (new gTLDs) under their stewardship, with CentralNic providing backend registry services, with over 2.3 million domains under management. This makes them the fifth largest new gTLD registry by DUM. Over 99% of all their registrations is for .xyz, which has almost 2.3 million registrations and is the second largest of the new gTLDs by registration numbers according to nTLDstats.com.

.Monster is being promoted as a TLD for creative thinkers, masters of their craft, and modern-day renegades. The team says .Monster domains are for scary good ideas. .monster was originally delegated to online employment company Monster Worldwide, Inc.

The launch, or rather relaunch, of .baby will see over 50,000 .baby domain names released at standard pricing on 2 April at 14:00 UTC. The list of .baby domains dropping is available here.

The .baby gTLD was originally applied for by 6 applicants, including Google, but Johnson & Johnson won it at auction, paying $3,088,888. This was the ninth highest amount paid to date for a new gTLD at an auction to resolve a contention set but way below the $135 million paid for .web by Verisign, the $41,501,000 paid for .shop by GMO Registry and 25,001,000 paid for .app by Google.

However Johnson & Johnson didn’t ever seem to have their heart in it. After hitting General Availability in April 2016, registrations peaked at around 600 when it seems to have been transferred to the .XYZ registry.

Domain Name Registrants, Domain Name Registrars, Domain Name Registry, New gTLDs

.XYZ Back On Top: Regains #1 New gTLDs Registrations Crown

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.

Domain Name Registrants, Domain Name Registry

CentralNic Expanding and Consolidating

CentralNic logoDomain name company, CentralNic, provider of registry and registrar services around the world, released its first half 2017 results this week showing impressive results and expansion.

Recurring revenues continue to increase, reflecting the strong focus on growing the proportion of CentralNic’s revenues being of a recurring nature, as exemplified post period-end by the acquisition of SK-NIC in August 2017 and the renegotiated .xyz contract.

For the first half of 2017 CentralNic’s adjusted EBITDA, excluding forex gains and losses, was £1.4m (H1 2016: £0.9m), up 50%, while gross profit for the six months was £3.0m (H1 2016: £2.3m), up 29.5%, revenue of £10.6m (H1 2016: £8.9m),up 19% and net cash of £7.73m (2016: £6.04m).

CentralNic, which boasts of customers in 200 countries throughout its divisions has also made a couple of significant announcements recently. Thursday they announced the .xyz added 10 years to their contract to provide registry services to 2032 and that they’ve moved to a monthly fee based on the volume of .xyz registrations and subscriptions managed.

In late August CentralNic also announced they had acquired the business and assets of SK-NIC, the manager of the exclusive country code top-level domain for Slovakia, .sk. The acquisition involves the purchase of the business, including all the property, rights and assets, of SK-NIC. There is optimism for significant growth in .sk. Slovakia’s economy is growing strongly but a low penetration rate for .sk domain names. It has an estimated penetration of 63 domains per 1000 head of capita as at 31 December 2016, compared to the neighbouring Czech Republic at 121 domains per 1000 head of capita and to the UK with 162 domains per 1000 head of capita – indicating significant growth potential with competitive pricing and service levels.

CentralNic’s retail division focus on optimising marketing performance is paying dividends having completed integration and consolidation of Instra Group. Its wholesale business maintained its lead in global market share by volume, being the only company which supports 6 of the Top 20 new Top-Level Domains. There has also been new client wins as a registry service provider with .rugby .observer and .storage added to the company’s portfolio as well as multiple contracts with country code Top-Level Domains.

“Our underlying first half results have been most encouraging as CentralNic continues to deliver organic growth alongside significant earnings enhancing acquisitions,” said Mike Turner, Chairman of CentralNic.

“Both our organic growth and roll-up strategy are underpinned by a drive to increase the size and scale of the business by focussing on activities which will deliver recurring revenues and high visibility of earnings. This concentrates our efforts on the higher margin and higher growth segments of the market.

“In keeping with the consistently heavy second-half weighting of results in recent years, the Board is confident that the Company is on track to meet market expectations for the full year to 31 December 2017, as we continue to diversify through the acquisition of businesses with high-levels of recurring revenue, organically grow our existing recurring revenue businesses, and take advantage of opportunities to trade in valuable premium domain names.”

Domain Name Registrants, Domain Name Registrars, Domain Name Registry

.XYZ Celebrates Independence Day in 5 Asian Countries With Discounted Promotions

dotXYZ logoThe .xyz new gTLD may have dropped 5 million registrations this year following very low renewal rates following discounted promotions in 2016, but it hasn’t stopped them having an eye on more discounted promotions.

Five nations in Asia – Pakistan, India, Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam – celebrate their respective independence days in August and early September. To celebrate, .xyz has joined with regional registrars to run special, limited-time sales.

So if you want a discounted .xyz domain and want to use a regional registrar, check out the .xyz website here for a list of the promotions and registrars.

Domain Name Registrants, Domain Name Registrars, Domain Name Registry, New gTLDs

.TOP Is Now The Tops Among New gTLDs

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.

Domain Name Registrants, Domain Name Registrars, Domain Name Registry, New gTLDs

New gTLDs Lose Over 1.8 Million Registrations in 2 Weeks Led By .XYZ As Promotion Anniversary Passes

New gTLD registrations have fallen over a cliff in that last 2 weeks, losing over 1.8 million registrations led by a massive decline of almost 1.7 million from .xyz over the same period, according to nTLDstats.com. The .xyz decline was expected given a massive promotion they held in May 2016 when 3.2 million .xyz domains were registered in 3 days.

Today registrations for the 1,226 new generic top level domains to have been delegated by ICANN stands at 24.948 million, down from the heady days of 4 April 2017 when registrations stook at 29.420 million, a decline approaching 4.5 million. 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.

And there is more pain to come for .xyz with almost 1.5 million domain names listed in upcoming deletes and 2.8 million for new gTLDs in general. But with total registrations standing at 3.921 million, assuming the majority are paid for, there is still plenty of potential, and profit, for .xyz.

But it’s not just .xyz that has suffered. The second largest of the new gTLDs, .top, is also on a decline. It peaked at 4.787 million on 12 January this year and has been on a decline ever since to today’s 3.298 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 1.036 million, .vip, with a peak of 851,600 on 4 August to today’s 783,200, .wang which peaked at 1.120 million on 3 March and today stands at 663,700, .site which peaked at 729,200 on 1 May and today stands at 540,100, .bid which peaked at 619,600 on 17 January and today stands at 492,100.

Those who have defied the massive declines are .club which has maintained registrations just above the one million mark since 30 June. 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 2.170 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.

And of course, don’t forget, that while paid registrations are important, along with high renewal rates, it is use that’s the most important. Seeing new gTLDs being used out on the street, in advertising and packaging and elsewhere is important for their ongoing success.

Domain Name Registrants, Domain Name Registrars, Domain Name Registry, New gTLDs

Verisign Report Shows Significant Slowing of Domain Registration Growth

Once upon a time not that many years ago, the growth in domain name registrations each year was like growth in the Chinese economy – well over 10%. These days the growth rate overall is nothing to be sneezed. In the year to the end of March, registrations around the world grew by 3.7% (11.8 million) to 330.6 million across all top level domains (TLDs) according to the latest Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief. It was only in the preceding year, to the end of March 2016, that registrations had grown 11%.

OK, Verisign add a proviso when looking back on registrations for registrations to the end of March 2016 for the .tk (Tokelau) country code top level domain (ccTLD) with a significant re-estimation downwards of its zone file size. As a result total global domain name registrations were changed from 326.4 million to 318.8 million. However these 10%+ annual registration increases were standard for several years.

The change in of annual registration increases of below 5% though are likely to be standard for some years to come as the significant growth is coming from ccTLDs in developing countries and within new gTLDs, although even here due to some new gTLDs such as .xyz having hugely discounted promotions, renewal rates are very low and even declining. However in total new gTLD registrations have stabilised around the 27 million mark for the last 6 weeks according to nTLDstats.com. As of 31 March new gTLD registrations were near their peak of 29.1 million. They peak at 29.4 million in mid-April.

For the quarter, registrations grew only 0.4% (1.3 million) to 31 March, which indicated an even greater slowdown in registration growth.

The .com and .net TLDs had a combined total of approximately 143.6 million domain name registrations in the domain name base in the first quarter of 2017 – 128.4 million for .com and 15.2 million for .net. This represents a 0.8% increase year over year, almost entirely due to increase in .com.

Among ccTLDs, .cn (China) has regained the crown of the largest and now has 21.4 million registrations to be the second largest of all TLDs while .tk has 18.6 million with .de (Germany) next with 16.2 million. Following in the top ten TLDs is .net then .uk (United Kingdom – 10.6m), .org (10.4m), .ru (Russian Federation – 6.4m), .nl (Netherlands – 5.7m) and then the largest of the new gTLDs, .xyz (5.6m).

Growth in ccTLDs was only 0.3% for the quarter, or 408,242 registrations, and 1.7% (2.4 million) for the year. Without including .tk, ccTLD domain name registrations increased approximately 568,242 in the first quarter of 2017, a 0.5 percent increase compared to the fourth quarter of 2016 and ccTLDs increased by approximately 4.6 million domain name registrations, or 3.9 percent, year over year.

At the end of the first quarter there were 294 global ccTLD extensions delegated in the root, including Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs), with the top 10 ccTLDs composing 64.7 percent of all ccTLD domain name registrations.

For the new gTLDs registrations totalled 25.4 million as of 31 March, 7.7% of total domain name registrations. The top 10 new gTLDs represented 64.1% of all new gTLD domain name registrations.

Volume 14, Issue 2, of the Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief is available for download from:
http://www.verisign.com/assets/domain-name-report-Q12017.pdf

An archive of recent reports is available from:
http://www.verisign.com/en_US/domain-names/dnib/domain-name-industry-brief-reports/index.xhtml