new gtlds Pull up your sleeves, you new G's

[HotKey]

For the 3rd time in 6 months, watching the ol' tee-vee and wouldn't you know, on comes a Go Daddy commercial, with surprise surprise, promoting .guesswhatyesdot-com

I have yet to see another registrar or registry produce something like this for new G's, or anything for that matter.

So essentially, what we have here, is the maximum exposure on prime time television. 3 times in 6 months. Resulting in Mom and Pop knowing only three things:

- to buy a domain
- and there is only one extension
- all at one registrar

GD.

Soo, what the heck is every other registry and registrar doing to combat this monopolization? Nothing. No sleeves being pulled up, nothing being invested in main-stream television advertising by them.

I mean, comeon, get to work people. Investors pulling up our sleeves, but we seem to be the only ones. We have limited resources in educating the masses. To generate mass appeal on new products, we need exposure from the source, or even places like talk shows. Eg. Ellen or Jimmy Fallon. Else we're looking at a 50 year adoption rate. I mean slow and steady winds the race, but that slow??

When you have prime-time exposure, you don't have to worry about the distractors sitting around in circles singing kum ba yah and moaning and groaning how the non-coms don't get traffic, there's no comparables and oh no they are soo confusing. We don't need this mantra as new G investors. I would prefer if you're not willing to be educated, at the very least offer something constructive that improves to what we're building.

I realize Verisign is pooping cash, which helps them inject funds to, well, help them poop more cash, but surely the people who run new extensions had more than just the initial capital of 180k to acquire the new G?

They can't make something on the magnitude of a domain extension and expect people to just know about it. Particularly when up against an almost 40 year old behemoth.

So what's the problem? Are there vested interests that are attempting to bury new adoption? Or are these new registries really that cash-strapped? Whatever it is, looks like it continues to be up to us to roll up our sleeves and plug on. But until more excitement is generated, my weight will be on current stock rather than new acquisitions.

 

[HotKey]

so I would like to remind us all of what @HotKey said in the post that started this thread:

thx for putting the train back on its tracks, Bob.
It's ok, I think the branching out touches areas we might otherwise not be aware of, perhaps sparking a new idea that ties into the thread's core.

But stuff like this is unnecessary

Bob, you are wasting your words, how about just accepting new tlds they aren't doing so well and domainers have no control over it?

and offthehandle, well it's expected he will go off the handle at times..

**

How many have you visited or have got in your bookmarks ?
Personal experience counts more than registration numbers.

My answer: never visited any, so I don't care. Just another extension.

I've got quite a few of new gTLD sites bookmarked, active businesses or blogs. I find with solely relying on bookmarks is, they do not give you a need to venture out of them.

**

Holiday domains such as .christmas they are a struggle, because usage/interest only happen once during the year, the rest of the time stays so slow..
But using this kind of extension with the right name would bring A LOT of eyes to it in a medium such as TV commercial during the holidays.

**

"The medium is the message" a phrase learned from way back, has always struck as a powerful way to describe a new gTLD and how it could be used to bring them to mainstream.[/QUOTE][/QUOTE]

 

[JB Lions]

The chart for dot APP in fact displays a continuously RISING line.

Since I am an investor in stocks (and have read 29 books about the sharemarket) I know enough about technical chart analysis. The following is from your own cited source:

https://www.ntldstats.com/tld/app

There are now an astounding 377,919 dot APP domains registered.

On 30 December 2018, there were 354,186 dot APP domains. Now there are 377,919. That represents growth of 23,733 domains in less than three months.

Here are the REAL numbers since 1 February:

FEBRUARY

1st 364,416
2nd 364,679
3rd 364,925
4th 365,246
5th 365,597
6th 365,902
7th 366,292
8th 366,607
9th 366,829
10th 367,056
11th 367,404
12th 367,706
13th 368,018
14th 368,323
15th 368,620
16th 368,851
17th 369,078
18th 369,370
19th 369,761
20th 370,206
21st 370,639
22nd 370,957
23rd 371,330
24th 371,587
25th 371,933
26th 372,320
27th 372,723
28th 373,215

MARCH

1st 373,667
2nd 373,969
3rd 374,247
4th 374,587
5th 374,955
6th 375,265
7th 375,599
8th 375,949
9th 376,214
10th 376,434
11th 376,672
12th 376,661
13th (inaccessible)
14th (inaccessible)
15th 377,919

As for dot DEV, it’s only been released a few weeks ago and you are already complaining there is “nearly no usage”?

I'm not sure why this stuff gets brought up as any kind of point. It's in it's first year, every single extension the first year goes up, it's the only direction it can go. Open public registration was May 2018 it says. So first anniversary is coming up, first drops.

Same with .dev, when I see posting that it went over 100,000. I could be in the minority but this isn't a big deal to me. We have single domainers that have more in their personal portfolio and it'll slow down.

 

[johnnie018]

The chart for dot APP in fact displays a continuously RISING line.

You haven't read my post correctly because I am talking about *daily registrations* it is a long slow graph down for .app and .dev is going the same way. Gradually the number of new domains registered each day is falling. Interest is waning.

You are talking about total registrations, of course they are rising because it is impossible for any new tld to decline in the first year since deletes haven't yet started.

In a couple of years it will be a situation of 100 new registrations in a day and 80 deletes, they may well even see see overall declines by then. This is not the way successful tlds come about where peak interest is in the first week and it just goes downhill from then on.

 

[johnnie018]

The fact that the registry (RADIX) recently reported remarkable revenue growth of 30 percent and profitability growth of 45 percent certainly indicates that firstly, the extension is successful and secondly, their pricing across their strings cannot but be high on average.

.site declined 40% in the year before that. It is another manipulated string. Between China and 99 cent specials who knows what is really going on. Have you ever seen one of these sites used or promoted? I haven't.

 

[johnnie018]

Ok, maybe it is 87% or 95.7%, I just threw it as a ballpark number, I don’t care what the actual number is, but Christmas makes or breaks large retailers and malls. I have been involved reading this sort of number every year my entire adult life. Even CNBC and stock market talk all about “ we are waiting for the Christmas sales numbers to come out... blah, blah, blah..”. Its basic normal mall retailers. Amazon hires extra employees to sleep in tents too.

Yes Christmas is important, but it is not likely to be 95% or anything near that, you've made up a complete nonsense number.

 

[johnnie018]

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. Bob’s link shows dot site reg price hugging $1 since 2016 so let’s say elegance or desperation is in the eye of the beholder. To me the biggest hurdle for this one is it’s like naming your dog “Dog”, other than that I don’t resent any tld for being priced at a buck, I wish they all were.

Only a dollar for the first year, after that have to search for coupons. Works well for spammers who would never renew anyway, but not domainers when they realize each new tld domain takes 400 years on average to sell to enduser.

 

[jmcc]

I truly believe that Google search is the best source to show actual uses of ngTLDs. If you have a better source, kindly advise me.

It is not. It is completely inaccurate and hasn't worked for years.

It seems the Google search results contradict with nTLDStats figures. If possible, can you educate me how nTLDStats considers a registration? Where does nTLDStats collect information? And does nTLDStats count all registrations all over the world?

When it comes to usage and development in TLDs, NTLDstats' methodology is pure cargo-cult rubbish and extremely inaccurate. Registration volume as a metric has been almost completely discredited by the use of discounting as a business model by some registries. These discounted registrations do not renew well. Some new gTLDs have renewal rates below 10% and one has a renewal rate below 1%.

Regards...jmcc

 

[jmcc]

Thanks for your information!

The websites have a limitation that since not every registry publishes their zonefile data in advance to their General Availability, they only get data for TLDs that already launched General Availability. So, their figures do not show a full picture of all registrations.

The new gTLDs and some legacy gTLDs have been publishing their zonefiles long before General Availability on the CZDS. Admittedly, it is only domain names in the zonefiles that are included in the zonefiles. They can be correlated with the official registry reports published by ICANN so that an estimate for the number of dark domain names (domain names without nameservers) can be generated.

Regards...jmcc

 

[jmcc]

These are the ICANN registry reports (the .BIZ one for November 2018 is broken at the moment):
https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/registry-reports

They are in comma separated variable format (CVS) but most spreadsheet programs will import them without any problems. They are approximately three months behind due to contractual reasons and because of the lifecycle of a gTLD domain name.

This is the CZDS.
https://czds.icann.org/home

It is basically a single site where the gTLD zonefiles for over 1,200 gTLDs are available. Some of the legacy gTLDs have been added in the last few years (CAT, COOP, JOBS, NET, PRO, MUSEUM, TEL, TRAVEL, XXX). The .COM, .BIZ, .INFO, ASIA and NAME are not yet available via CZDS but the .COM is a rather large download (3GB or so).

The new gTLDs are typically made available via the CZDS (part of the registry agreement) and are available before General Availability. It is possible to sign up for access and request access to the zonefiles.

Regards...jmcc

 

[johnnie018]

As for dot DEV, it’s only been released a few weeks ago and you are already complaining there is “nearly no usage”?

It is simply a fact.

Either an extension has usage or it doesn't. New tlds are all failing because of no usage. They are 25 years too late. Nothing can change that obvious fact, even threads here complaining about what registries are doing can't change things!

Domainers will have no success telling registries how to run their business, domainers need to choose successful extensions. Expecting them to change or trying to point out all their supposed faults is like betting on a horse race, losing because the horse is actually hopeless, and then blaming it all on the trainer. Next time choose the right horse!

Domainers must take responsibility for their own bad choices, it is not the fault of the registry that the extension isn't doing well for you.

 

[oldtimer]

@jmcc , you have been providing valuable stats and analysis here on NamePros for over 10 years now and your efforts are appreciated, but some people here have been tossing numbers around and making certain assumptions and judgments about certain extensions based on the face value of certain stats without even being aware of the types of domains that have been dropping or being added in certain New gTLDs.

When it comes to the New gTLDs we have to analyze them with a new mindset as some of the metrics that have been used in the past such as the total number of registrations or number of reported sales do not make an accurate representation of the viability, and potentials of some of those New gTLDs.

A New gTLD that has targeted use with only 30k registrations might be a better choice to add to one’s portfolio than one that has general use with over a million registrations. So in my opinion total number of registrations should not be used as the only metric when selecting which New gTLD has long term potentials.

Also the number of reported sales (or lack of them) for a certain New gTLD should not be used as the main factor to determine the viability of that extension, because for whatever reason a lot of the sales are not being reported by the Registries, and many small businesses, institutions, and individuals have been gradually registering and using certain New gTLDs for their websites without having to pay a premium price and so they all have been going unnoticed and you might not necessarily see them around unless if you do a search on google for Site:.NewgTLD (replace .NewgTLD with one that you want to see the websites for like for example .forsale or .loan).

The number of drops should also not be used as a metric for those New gTLDs that have targeted use, because there are only a certain number of domains that make sense for each one of those New gTLDs and any thing above that should not have been registered in the first place. The Registry is certainly not throwing away the domains that have perfect keyword/extension correlation and as the matter of fact I believe that they are picking up any good domains that might get dropped by others and are adding them to their reserved pool. Also it should be understandable for everyone that sooner or later the number of new registrations for the targeted use New gTLDs are going to slow down and perhaps even plateau at some point in the future since there are only a certain number of domains that make sense for each one of those New gTLDs.

Conclusion: numbers and stats can give us some idea as to the performance of certain extensions, but when it comes to New gTLDs that have targeted use you are better off ignoring a lot of these stats that are being tossed around and just use your common sense to find a few domains that have good keyword/extension correlation at low renewal charges. I didn't use a lot of stats when registering SmartHomes.forsale and HomeMortgage.loan , just one look at them and I knew that they had potentials.

IMO

 

[johnnie018]

I didn't use a lot of stats when registering SmartHomes.forsale and HomeMortgage.loan , just one look at them and I knew that they had potentials.

Maybe that is the problem, not crunching enough numbers before hitting the register button? If you look at say homemortgageloan.com it is sitting parked, I'd say because the "loan" at the end is superfluous.

Ditto for smarthomesforsale.com where the issues would be, is there even a market for such a name? and it is extremely long.

 

[Henry Y]

I agree that it is not logical to use historical records to evaluate new things. If something are new, how come they can have history? I disagree with someone who say that a new gTLD has no value just because of no recorded sales. There are many other factors to evaluate a domain. Historical records are only useful if they are comparable to the domain being evaluated (i.e. same extension and similar keywords) and recent (e.g. less than 3 years). Just like no analysts compare HSBC's stock price with Apple's stock price, and no appraisers evaluate a property's price based on its last selling price ten years ago.

Investing in ngTLDs should not mainly use historical records (i.e. technical analysis). Instead, ngTLD investors should mainly use intrinsic values of ngTLD domains (i.e. fundamental analysis, the major approach that Warren Edward Buffett uses in his investments).

 

[offthehandle]

and offthehandle, well it's expected he will go off the handle at times..

More than once. Opinions at times on all open forums amd discussion groups like this seem at times to lack objectivity, or strong opinion or someone to actually question what others seem to be closed minded or blind to. I have no problem questioning and being the pundit, and at times be proven wrong. Too many lurkers and too few divergent ideas make this pretty boring. My sarcasm isn’t necessarily negative, but intended to be thought provoking. I have no axe to grind, no website I advertise, no domains to sell to anyone here, no investment in registries or pay per click blog links.

No question, that if the ngtld owners wanted to recoup their investment and increase market share, they had the advertising opportunity when they started. I remember when .biz and .us came out, and registered many in my business niche solely for redirects to my business site when emd worked, before Google became what it is. They were ok, but my .net and .com always ranked better. Never ever thought these alternates would be “better” than the LLL.com my business brand ran on for many years. All were One word, .us and .biz abeit niche words. I dropped them all, never cared or looked back, in fact my competitors grabbed them, and none ranked them ever btw, none are equal to my single word .com in value. Recently I lucklily spotted and bought back (2) 1997 one word .com regged domains I had dropped years ago, someone else used them for awhile and just for the sake of grabbing them again I did because I could and the price was right.

Bottom line is, None of my niche keywords would I buy in these latest .website or whatever extensions, based on .biz and .us as legacy old line failures in value compared to .com. Do we often see a one word .us or .biz sell for $xxxx?, I don’t see many, so why would I go buy a .tech or .site or any others as an investment.? Imo .Biz is a failed alternative to .com, so why would .Web if ever gets released make any difference? Perhaps if promoted with enough money as the new .Com, sure. We will see of course. It isn’t a question of rolling up sleeves as much as it is opening up a wallet and paying to promote it.

 

[BrandableDomain]

Okay then, let's talk about .app since it was released almost a year ago, and it's a Google TLD too. It's got 370K+ regs.

How many have you visited or have got in your bookmarks ?
Personal experience counts more than registration numbers.

My answer: never visited any, so I don't care. Just another extension.
And even if I get a chance to visit one, it probably won't change a thing unless I become a repeat visitor.
Just another extension.
Where are all those developed sites ? Or is it me who is special ?

Me too, I’ve never visited any dot DEV domains, maybe one or two dot APP out of curiosity. Of course, sheer curiosity doesn’t validate the existence of a new extension. But I haven’t visited them because I’m not a professional developer.

No doubt in my mind however that tech people would be making lots of visits to their peer’s dot APP sites every day.

But I am a professional designer and have visited a tiny number of new gTLD sites multiple times like:

Adobe.design

It’s well worth visiting.

Another example I have visited multiple times because of my personal interests is:

Marcel.sydney

I know, I know, it is a ridiculous domain but it is also so cool that it has traction below the surface.

It is part of the giant Publicis media group and clients include RioTinto, Mondelez, Unicef, Nestle and the Australian Government.

Once you get used to the domain, an alternative EMD domain like SydneyAdvertising.com actually looks pretty boring to me.

Personally, I believe in the long term new gTLDs will slowly gain traction and millennials will have no problem using them as they grow older. As I hear about exciting new sites, I’ll visit more and more.

Then there are names like:

Amazon.jobs

This major site must get countless millions of visitors. Awareness of the new extensions can only grow, it can’t go backwards.

 

[BrandableDomain]

Re registration numbers, my view is that overall ngTLD numbers are roughly constant for the last almost 3 years. Critics find a period when they seem to go down and stress that, proponents find a period when going up and emphasize that. The details mirror how many discounts are happening. It is real world use that matters in any case (data nTLDstats)

Re pricing some registries have gone route of deep discounts and then much higher renewal as their model. The idea is after a year of use enough will want it that they will keep the domain. It is a model we use in many other things - pretty sure that my TV-Internet plan probably lost money on the first 6 month period but count on me sticking with them for at least a few years. Essentially the $0.99 .com domains from GoDaddy (and the deep discounts in first year of .info) use the same model - they lose (wholesale at least prior to any incentives at registrar level is $7.85+$0.18) but count on long term win. Others new extension registries have taken the approach one price with registration and renewals all at the same price (recent Google .dev, .page and .app for example follow that).

But really we have again let critics divert the attention of a thread into questions that have little do do with the essential idea that this thread was supposed to be about, so I would like to remind us all of what @HotKey said in the post that started this thread:

Bob

Thanks Bob for posting the new gTLD five year chart in comment #241 - because it is precisely the very same reference chart I was referring to in my previous comment #184 called “PROOF”!

In that comment I said:

“These stats can be obtained from the five year chart of the entire program:

“The new gTLD program peaked at around 29.5M in 2017.

“In 2018 the numbers fell to 22.5M, indicating a dramatic collective fall of -7M.

“However, by 2019 they had risen to 26M indicating a gain of 3.5M.”

It’s fairly simple if you know about technical chart analysis. That hump that extends from around March 2016 to around September 2017 can be explained away by the unsustainable cheap promotions of just four new gTLD extensions.

They rose and fell like a bubble, and vanished like a bubble.

However, because of my technical chart analysis, I disagree with Bob where he says:

“my view is that overall ngTLD numbers are roughly constant for the last almost 3 years”.

(I believe Bob should’t have based his starting point any near so high, because it was based on inflated registration numbers, so should have been discounted under my analysis.)

The chart changed direction to suddenly go up too quickly around March 2016. It peaked around May 2017 then plunged until September 2017.

My opinion is that the trend line (which I claim is a fairly straight line from zero at the beginning of the curve at bottom left, up to 26 million at the end of the curve at top right), illustrates quite consistent growth for the entire five years, once you ignore the abberation of the junk promotions. In other words the hump.

There is a wise expression in the sharemarket:

“The trend is your friend.”

 

[oldtimer]

Getting back to the original subject of this thread, the New gTLDs are getting some exposure at the registrars since customers are now being presented with alternative choices if their desired domain is not available in .com , but still a collective advertising campaign by the New gTLD Registries and seeing more TV ads by larger companies that are actually using New gTLDs for their websites can certainly help to create more awareness and to accelerate the acceptance of New gTLDs as a viable choice for the general public.

It's also a good idea to perhaps separate the targeted use New gTLDs from the general use New gTLDs when it comes to justifying the renewal charges since due to the limited number of suitable domains in the targeted use New gTLDs perhaps the Registries should be expected to charge more for those domains, but in my opinion the higher charges should not all be just reflected in the renewal charges as that might put some people off, so perhaps the targeted use New gTLD Registries should adopt a new pricing model in which the price of the top domains is half reflected in the renewal charges and half is reflected in the first year initial registration charges so that the renewal charges won’t go higher than lets say $500 dollars for any domain which is not a big deal as a yearly expense for most businesses that only want one or two premium domain names. IMO

Targeted Use New gTLD = tgTLD

General Use (or purpose) New gTLD = ggTLD

( the second g stands for generic as in “Generic Top Level Domain” )

 

[HotKey]

But I am a professional designer and have visited a tiny number of new gTLD sites multiple times like:

Adobe.design

Marcel.sydney

Once you get used to the domain, an alternative EMD domain like SydneyAdvertising.com actually looks pretty boring to me.

Amazon.jobs

Thx for pointing those out, great examples. There's also a dedicated "new Gtld's in the wild" thread for those of you wishing to see other real world examples of them.

And to your point of the alternate EMD "long-tail" in the com, it does get pretty boring, and cutting the domain name in half in many cases by just finding the relative new extension can turn something ugly, into a beauty. Like Oldtimer's example of the .forsale he's using, compared to it's .com counterpart, a much better fit.

**

Getting back to the original subject of this thread, the New gTLDs are getting some exposure at the registrars since customers are now being presented with alternative choices if their desired domain is not available in .com , but still a collective advertising campaign by the New gTLD Registries and seeing more TV ads by larger companies that are actually using New gTLDs for their websites can certainly help to create more awareness and to accelerate the acceptance of New gTLDs as a viable choice for the general public.

Yes for sure.
A collective approach is an optimal solution, a mix bag of tlds sponsoring one or more registrars to take it to air. Bob had talked about this too. You might even have registries scrambling to be included, in such a scenario. It was argued that it will never happen (registries working together) but if it is what is necessary, then it must be done. Or otherwise a registrar would have to take it upon themselves to produce their own, showcasing the extensions they offer.

There is that (exposure at registrars), and offthehandle or JB had also touched on it, and to boot at the registrar (GD) I accused of monopolizing the whole thing. Ironically, they are taking it in the right direction in terms of exposure. So the suggestions are there, yet it hasn't taken off. People either aren't interested, yet, or there could be a disconnect between mainstream TV ad that attracted them to the site, advertising a .com, yet they see all these new G's being offered, and simply don't understand them.

I don't like working with "what if" scenarios, because we can "what if" all day long to try to justify our current vision, but just a thought I had:

In a way to connect with and have them (Citizen Joe) understood that a new G extension essentially does the same thing as a .com, it must be initially presented as such. Imagine for a second GD developed and used their own branded extension in such a way, eg. Go.Daddy

And then draw the parallels how Gd in the com is now Go.Daddy:
-The new personalized extension works exactly the same way as a .com
- But tailored to an exact fit.
-The commercial would show a mix of names taking advantage of new Gtld extensions, continuing to draw the parallel how they work exactly as a .com, underscoring how though, now instead of using .com, they use "tailored" fit to your business or brand.

A fictitious example, but an approach like this would have some "light bulbs" go off with Mr. Joe.

 

[Brands.International]

While we are discussing this heated debate, some large players are silently drop-catching all interesting (with standard renewals) new gTLD names which individuals are dropping.

In recent months, I was trying to drop catch something interesting and valuable, but honestly not much success anymore...that tells something as well. Except realty.rentals which was a great catch, and o*****.live which complements my adult .live portfolio, nothing interesting. So I believe competition is huge here.

I think people are on surface saying something and they are doing something else in reality.
I would not be much surprised to find that some largest critics are building at least small new gTLD portfolios as well, enjoying privacy now GDPR gave us

 

[Brands.International]

Getting back to the original subject of this thread, the New gTLDs are getting some exposure at the registrars since customers are now being presented with alternative choices if their desired domain is not available in .com , but still a collective advertising campaign by the New gTLD Registries and seeing more TV ads by larger companies that are actually using New gTLDs for their websites can certainly help to create more awareness and to accelerate the acceptance of New gTLDs as a viable choice for the general public.

It's also a good idea to perhaps separate the targeted use New gTLDs from the general use New gTLDs when it comes to justifying the renewal charges since due to the limited number of suitable domains in the targeted use New gTLDs perhaps the Registries should be expected to charge more for those domains, but in my opinion the higher charges should not all be just reflected in the renewal charges as that might put some people off, so perhaps the targeted use New gTLD Registries should adopt a new pricing model in which the price of the top domains is half reflected in the renewal charges and half is reflected in the first year initial registration charges so that the renewal charges won’t go higher than lets say $500 dollars for any domain which is not a big deal as a yearly expense for most businesses that only want one or two premium domain names. IMO

Targeted Use New gTLD = tgTLD

General Use (or purpose) New gTLD = ggTLD

( the second g stands for generic as in “Generic Top Level Domain” )

@oldtimer it is very nice to read your reasonable post, as you are one of not many people who understand that we need to start really distinguishing between what you named tgTLD and ggTLD, and we can not expect tgTLDs to have some large numbers of total registrations and to compare those numbers to .com, let's say.

I wrote an article about it as well here at Namepros in 2017, and what you call tgTLD was named there "narrow extension" and your ggTLD was named "broad extension" - this idea was considered "too complicated" by some of OPs at that time, so I am glad it is now discussed again!

https://www.namepros.com/threads/ne...ities-part-4-broad-narrow-extensions.1043239/

 

[ecalc]

Investing in ngTLDs should not mainly use historical records (i.e. technical analysis). Instead, ngTLD investors should mainly use intrinsic values of ngTLD domains (i.e. fundamental analysis, the major approach that Warren Edward Buffett uses in his investments).

Buffett owns real businesses that churn out earnings and dividends. That’s a lot different than owning an item with an intrinsic value of $1 (replacement cost), no earnings and no higher comparable sales. No comps means no market = no supply and/or no demand. Supply is plentiful so ...

 

[Bob Hawkes]

I am not sure entirely if this is the right thread, but since it has included talk of some of the extensions and the idea of generic vs specific new extensions I decided to post it here. The following thought has been going around in my mind for a few months but I have never posted it....

I have wondered what Google's long term strategy is in the domain business. Many have pointed out that they have had some strange and unsuccessful early forays, but of late they are clearly putting more resources and having more of an impact. As a .com registrar they are now top 10 in the world (from more than a thousand) and as a registry arguably 2 off the 3 recent introductions have at least been more successful than most. Their .app is in 11th place overall and .dev at 39th in terms of overall registrations. They have about 500,000 domains in their registries now.

The more interesting thing is some of the extensions they have delegated but not available (40 extensions) plus a few that are still in contention. Now some of these are clearly for their brand (google, android, gmail, etc.), but they also have extensions like new, prof, play, mov, map, eat, drive, etc.

So what do they hope to achieve? Here is a speculation (no insider information, just an idea that crossed my mind). Google is despite their diverse range of services primarily a search company. Search is complex, and would be greatly simplified if the extension meant something consistent with the content. That is if say .science websites had to do with science content, an .app page was for app support, .dog had to do with dogs, etc. What if they decided what extensions are specific as opposed to generic, and gave advantage in search to sites with content where there was congruence with the extension (and penalized pages that were not). Perhaps they just want to push this with some of their own extensions, although I see Donuts as the big winner if search ever went this way.

I guess what I am saying if we got to a point where both search and humans could depend on the fact that normally a .app meant a legitimate .app support/developer site, things would be way more efficient than a system where everything under the sun uses one legacy extension.

The branded restricted spaces like .coop are ideal for Google. They know that all sites there are some sort of certified cooperative organization. That makes search easier to do right. The same applies to extensions like .ngo/.ong that require nonprofit status, and .eco that have ecological verification standards. If the brands protected domains come into wide use, that works perfectly in this system - if I am searching for that company product or service or support, give priority to domains using that extension.

If you wanted to achieve this you would do things to encourage congruent use of an extension (notice that re .dev attendees at a developer conference get one, they have promoted it primarily to the developer community, they got big name developers online at launch, their evangelist is helping individuals with a .dev website to get traffic, etc.) while you would not do anything to encourage widespread unrelated use (note no price discounting in their last 3 launches).

Anyway, just my personal speculation on where Google might hope domains go. Should this be right specific use domains would have a huge advantage.

Just like the Chrome warnings give Google's secure space initiative a huge push, as the controller of search for about 75% of all search, if they decided to benefit extension specific content there could be a rapid and important change. And if they penalized unrelated content, also big implications.

Bob

ps I do know that Google say that extension does not matter in SEO. But is that a forever statement?

 

[Brands.International]

I am not sure entirely if this is the right thread, but since it has included talk of some of the extensions and the idea of generic vs specific new extensions I decided to post it here. The following thought has been going around in my mind for a few months but I have never posted it....

I have wondered what Google's long term strategy is in the domain business. Many have pointed out that they have had some strange and unsuccessful early forays, but of late they are clearly putting more resources and having more of an impact. As a .com registrar they are now top 10 in the world (from more than a thousand) and as a registry arguably 2 off the 3 recent introductions have at least been more successful than most. Their .app is in 11th place overall and .dev at 39th in terms of overall registrations. They have about 500,000 domains in their registries now.

The more interesting thing is some of the extensions they have delegated but not available (40 extensions) plus a few that are still in contention. Now some of these are clearly for their brand (google, android, gmail, etc.), but they also have extensions like new, prof, play, mov, map, eat, drive, etc.

So what do they hope to achieve? Here is a speculation (no insider information, just an idea that crossed my mind). Google is despite their diverse range of services primarily a search company. Search is complex, and would be greatly simplified if the extension meant something consistent with the content. That is if say .science websites had to do with science content, an .app page was for app support, .dog had to do with dogs, etc. What if they decided what extensions are specific as opposed to generic, and gave advantage in search to sites with content where there was congruence with the extension (and penalized pages that were not). Perhaps they just want to push this with some of their own extensions, although I see Donuts as the big winner if search ever went this way.

I guess what I am saying if we got to a point where both search and humans could depend on the fact that normally a .app meant a legitimate .app support/developer site, things would be way more efficient than a system where everything under the sun uses one legacy extension.

The branded restricted spaces like .coop are ideal for Google. They know that all sites there are some sort of certified cooperative organization. That makes search easier to do right. The same applies to extensions like .ngo/.ong that require nonprofit status, and .eco that have ecological verification standards. If the brands protected domains come into wide use, that works perfectly in this system - if I am searching for that company product or service or support, give priority to domains using that extension.

If you wanted to achieve this you would do things to encourage congruent use of an extension (notice that re .dev attendees at a developer conference get one, they have promoted it primarily to the developer community, they got big name developers online at launch, their evangelist is helping individuals with a .dev website to get traffic, etc.) while you would not do anything to encourage widespread unrelated use (note no price discounting in their last 3 launches).

Anyway, just my personal speculation on where Google might hope domains go. Should this be right specific use domains would have a huge advantage.

Just like the Chrome warnings give Google's secure space initiative a huge push, as the controller of search for about 75% of all search, if they decided to benefit extension specific content there could be a rapid and important change. And if they penalized unrelated content, also big implications.

Bob

Bob, I personally think this CAN be very possible future development. It is basically part of my speculation and reason why I bet so heavily on new gTLDs.

Because IF that really happens, and some extensions WOULD get that advantage, then of course, new gTLDs investors would be singing all they way to the bank (and again from the bank, and again to the bank, etc, lol).

So let's see what future will bring us

 

[JB Lions]

While we are discussing this heated debate, some large players are silently drop-catching all interesting (with standard renewals) new gTLD names which individuals are dropping.

In recent months, I was trying to drop catch something interesting and valuable, but honestly not much success anymore...that tells something as well. Except realty.rentals which was a great catch, and o*****.live which complements my adult .live portfolio, nothing interesting. So I believe competition is huge here.

I think people are on surface saying something and they are doing something else in reality.
I would not be much surprised to find that some largest critics are building at least small new gTLD portfolios as well, enjoying privacy now GDPR gave us

This is more nonsense spin. This is a pump type post, lacking in any real details. You want to set up this air, that something is happening, somebody out there is after all these new gtlds, then the conspiracy stuff, even some in this thread that are speaking against it, maybe they want it too.

Or we can't use the same metrics with these new gltds as we've done to every other extension in the past.

It's like you're searching for reasons, making excuses. But not really talking about real points, like the price points of these extensions. They're being held up by discount pricing. Then most are in China. But China is part of the market JB, yes I know, but for some reason, big Market USA isn't showing much love.

 

[offthehandle]

I think people are on surface saying something and they are doing something else in reality.

If you offered me Travel.agency for free, I would not want it. Its parked now, doing nothing btw. Look at the history too. Bad for the future value if you ask me, should have some $200 one page splash like Kush dot com has at least. Superior.investments either at reg fee as I posted before. Winning.horse either. Sweetheart.xyz either even if .99 cents.

How are you attempting to grab them? So you actually think there is some domainer disinformation and diversion conspiracy going on? Did you you look deeper? Look at nameservers, etc.

Turncommerce/Dropcatch doesn’t offer catching them afaik, (do they?) mostly NCO legacy only and .cc, the largest drop service and holder of domains. They advertise .com on all their parking pages.

Maybe Uni because they own a bunch or the registry owners of the other extensions and on Northsound names. If you find hard evidence please post it. Like has Web.com or Drums, Pa address actually have any?

I would bet the registries themselves are warehousing them, no domain investors.