Top 5 TLD failures

thanks for link although it appears the author of the site has no IDEA about some of what he talks about.

.info being a failure? thats incorrect.

I would say that .info is a "failure" as much as .eu... Millions of regs but little recognition.
He should have mentioned .jobs .coop and a couple others
Anyway that was fun to read.

I dislike Info very much yes, but making a bad use of it, doesnt qualify as failure.

Google thinks it's worth indexing 1,310,000,000 .info pages

What that article thinks of .info doesn't reflect what many others may think of it.

I think .info is great. It may not be as strong as .com or .org, but it's definitely up there compared to many other tlds out there.

.INFO is actually one of the only TLDs now DECREASING in the number of registrations per month / year.

Even .biz and .asia is increasing.

cfguru360 said:

.INFO is actually one of the only TLDs now DECREASING in the number of registrations per month / year.

Even .biz and .asia is increasing.

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I don't think the number of registrations necessarily shows how "good or bad" a TLD is because some TLDs are heavily speculated. However here are the figures for today and six months ago which suggest .info is increasing whereas .biz and .asia are actually shrinking.

Yesterday there were

5,300,121 .info
2,035,773 .biz

6 months ago (6th April)

5,143,631 .info
2,044,076 .biz

(Sorry we don't keep stats for .asia though from Hosterstats.com

1st April 243,884
1st October 212,199

How can xxx be a flop when it never even got started

gpmgroup said:

I don't think the number of registrations necessarily shows how "good or bad" a TLD is because some TLDs are heavily speculated. However here are the figures for today and six months ago which suggest .info is increasing whereas .biz and .asia are actually shrinking.

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Month to month growth patterns in .info are very cyclic. But it is still growing. The .biz also has a similar but far more subtle cyclic pattern.

The .asia sTLD is one that is stuck in the post-Landrush trough and new domain registrations have slowed down. The key element for any TLD is usage.

Regards...jmcc

---------- Post added at 04:11 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:05 PM ----------

sleepysentry said:

Perhaps the best point the author makes is that if TLDs like .aero and .museum were introduced a decade earlier before companies pumped millions into the web, maybe .com wouldn't have become the king it is today?

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Perhaps the author really does not understand the complexities of the domain business and how non .com TLDs figure in it. The .aero and .museum gTLDs are not massmarket TLDs and have a very specific target market. They would not have the same registration numbers as .com TLD even with millions of Dollars invested. It is a classic example of measuring everything by .com TLD.

Regards...jmcc

who agrees .INFO sites are usually Spam sites/Link farms/BlackHat seo/keyword stuffing/cheap turnkey/copy-pasted content ?? and this makes them unappealing or just not trust worthy

But this doesnt mean the TLD is a failure, its just badly administrated

nodws said:

who agrees .INFO sites are usually Spam sites/Link farms/BlackHat seo/keyword stuffing/cheap turnkey/copy-pasted content ?? and this makes them unappealing or just not trust worthy

But this doesnt mean the TLD is a failure, its just badly administrated

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OK where do these .info sites fit into those categories.
translink.info
CityRail.info
Queensland Amateur Radio
There are thousands of useful .info's just as there are thousands of useless .com's et al

translink.info - just a parked name.
CityRail.info - second storefront of cityrail.com
vk4.info - abandoned single-post-blog flowing with ads

I dint say .infos were "useless", nor did I stated .infos are evil

jmcc said:

Perhaps the author really does not understand the complexities of the domain business and how non .com TLDs figure in it. The .aero and .museum gTLDs are not massmarket TLDs and have a very specific target market. They would not have the same registration numbers as .com TLD even with millions of Dollars invested. It is a classic example of measuring everything by .com TLD.

Regards...jmcc

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The author doesn't seem to measure success just based on the number of registrations. For .museum, he states that even among musuems adoption has been slow and that many redirect to sites on other TLDs.

As to .aero, what major airline uses it? None of the top names in the industry have adopted it. Check out these names: boeing.aero, airbus.aero, united.aero, the list goes on. Nome of them take you anwhere useful.

sleepysentry said:

The author doesn't seem to measure success just based on the number of registrations. For .museum, he states that even among musuems adoption has been slow and that many redirect to sites on other TLDs.

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From what I can see, the author does not measure success at all. All he is doing is presenting his own opinion without facts and statistics to back it up. He seems to have a completely .com view of the internet and has also ignored the ccTLDs. When these gTLDs were introduced, the ccTLDs were not as important and .com was still the leading TLD in most countries. However in the intervening years, the ccTLDs have grown to compete with, and in some cases overtaken .com in many countries. The logic back then was that these new gTLDs would provide a more distinct TLD for various industries. Taken in numerical terms .cat could be considered failures by the author's logic. And yet .cat is a specific geographical gTLD that is doing as well as many small ccTLDs.

Regards...jmcc

---------- Post added at 08:41 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:40 AM ----------

This is what I posted as a comment on that blog post. It hasn't appeared yet:

The .xxx TLD never launched and as such it can’t actually be deemed a flop. The .museum and .aero are micro TLDs rather than massmarket TLDs with a potentially large registrant base. If I recollect correctly, the registrants have to satisfy some criteria in order to register a domain in these gTLDs. This concept might be somewhat alien to those who are only used to registering .com/net/org etc where there is no such requirement. TLDs that have specific registration rules tend to be smaller than those where anybody can register domains. This is one of the main factors in the success of .com registration volumes.

The .info is not exactly an alternative to .com TLD. And neither is it a failure. The monthly growth pattern in .info gTLD is cyclic and is driven by special offers. Many .info registrations would be brand protection registrations. The .info is actually a widely recognised gTLD in Europe. The numbers tend to disagree with your opinion that it is a flop.

Again .web runs into the reality wall. It was never launched so it effectively has not flopped.

The domain industry is a very complex one and it can be hard to understand. It is far more than .com and the gTLDs. However the biggest problem with it is people extrapolating a minimal, often purely .com, bit of knowledge to the rest of the extensions. Measuring everything by .com standards means that every TLD that does not have .com levels of registrations is a failure. However the reality is that Country Code TLDs, the ccTLDS are now eclipsing .com in some countries. The .com is a global TLD, its use is far more localised. The single element that really determines whether an extension is a success or flop is usage.

Regards...jmcc

Looks like the author of that blog post upset quite a few people in the domain name business. This is the last comment I've posted:

"For some of us, the domain name business is our business. That’s why we take some comments about what constitutes a success or failure seriously. Our reasoning may differ somewhat from your opinion of what makes a TLD a success or flop. Success and failure in business tend to have clear metrics and do not rely on mere opinion.

The .me and .tv are officially ccTLDs but they tend to be referred to as repurposed TLDs. Perhaps your blog post served its purpose being controversial merely for the sake of being controversial. The reality is that you don’t seem to understand the function of various TLDs and how they are used and you have failed to consider the key element of how a TLD is used when determining if a TLD is a success or a flop.

While I realise that the blog post is just your opinion, it makes some dubious assumptions. The McAfee study from 2007 does not seem to have been a complete survey of any TLD and is based, according to methodology, on McAfee’s site safety assessment database and it included 9.1 million websites. That’s only a fraction of the number of sites on the web. Thus extrapolating this to claim that 7.5% of .info sites are potentially dangerous is somewhat inaccurate. Claiming that “most individuals have a vested interest in one or more of the newer TLDs” does not detract from the abject poverty of facts and statistics in your blog post. Perhaps in future you can concentrate on facts rather than opinion in your pursuit of controversy."

Regards...jmcc

Now let's review this review shall we? I think we shall.

1.) .xxx: There was never a .xxx extension. Ever. It was just an IDEA, thus it wasn't by technical definition a 'failed extension.'

2.) .museum: Are there enough museums in this world to justify the existence of their own extension??!

3.) .info: The writer's supposed fodder for supporting his claim holds only little merit. They are cheap and are used as spam/scam sites a lot but .com -- and pardon the cliche -- but .com is king and is still used by many for the same black-hat BS that tarnishes .info's image. There is no -- NO -- difference between the 2 extensions on that regard except .info is used a bit more since they're cheaper. Thus, the writer was wrong adding it to this list. Argue that if you will but you'll be wrong.

4.) .web: Can you remember that .web that sold for $13 million dollars? Or your VERY first .web domain? Can you remember staying up all night, talking like an excited schoolgirl about this really great .web you saw earlier in the day? ...you can't? Eh. Me neither.

5.) .aero: See #2 above.

Looks like even the .info registry has weighed in on the comments. What possessed Pingdom to give such a poorly researched blog post space on its official blog?

Regards...jmcc

I don't agree with .info been a failure, In my opinion it was quite successful, especially compared to other TLD's

nodws said:

vk4.info - abandoned single-post-blog flowing with ads

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Not abandoned or a blog or overflowing with ads.
How can it be abandoned , only regged a few weeks ago. Very much Work-in Progress.

My own Personally done resource (i.e. NOT BareFootTech company minisite) info site about my own Hobby.
It was mentioned because A lot of .info's are in similiar categories. Small hobby or Self-interest niches , but that does not make them a FAILURE.

The guy who wrote that is a moron.

On the info extension:

...it is one of the most popular TLDs with 5.2 million registrations...

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Because of its bad reputation, the name has received almost no recognition from the Internet community.

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Anyone else see these as contradictions?

Aero is imho the biggest flop on that board but I think .name should be there instead of .info.

labrocca said:

The guy who wrote that is a moron.

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Agreed. It is a classic .com view of the web by someone who hasn't a clue.

Aero is imho the biggest flop on that board but I think .name should be there instead of .info.

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And no mention of .pro? If you want a laugh then read the .pro application to ICANN where it maps out how many domains it expected to register (the classic business school mistake of the market is so big so we should be able to get n % of that market). I think that .pro is currently around the 40K reg mark. The .name is somewhat higher.

The interesting thing from some of the ccTLD work that I've done is that personal domain name registrations (the name.ccTLD ones) only account for around 1% or so of registrations.

Regards...jmcc

You make great points. It's hard to narrow the trash down to only 5 flops but I believe this list is more accurate (in no particular order):

.name
.aero
.pro
.museum

And the 5th can be debated but I'd say otherwise .cc / .ws (although they are ccTLDs) or .biz (millions of registrations, probably 95% owned by investors)

jmcc said:

Agreed. It is a classic .com view of the web by someone who hasn't a clue.

And no mention of .pro? If you want a laugh then read the .pro application to ICANN where it maps out how many domains it expected to register (the classic business school mistake of the market is so big so we should be able to get n % of that market). I think that .pro is currently around the 40K reg mark. The .name is somewhat higher.

The interesting thing from some of the ccTLD work that I've done is that personal domain name registrations (the name.ccTLD ones) only account for around 1% or so of registrations.

Regards...jmcc

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.cat is so small, I don't even think anyone even knows it exists! That is a disaster!