poll Is there a future for new GTLDs?

[Leo Angelo]

I was surprised to learn today that a non-domainer friend migrated his website to the same name .blog because "for a blog, .blog makes more sense than .com." What about the renewal fee? "$29/yr. Not enough to be a deterrent."
He is an intelligent person who appreciates using the best and the fewest words. Using the self-explanatory TLD makes sense and is worth the extra money, in his opinion.
Maybe the new GLTDs are making inroads with public awareness and will keep gaining market share. What do you think, how do you feel about it?

 

[offthehandle]

Yes.

Thanks. Would be nice to know who these end users with websites are, then separate out how many redirect to their real company name in a .Com or .ccTLD.

Travel .agency (flipped and now parked sold a couple year ago), home .loans, are large dollar sales of a couple with publicity on this forum.

Here is Rick's recent comments:

https://twitter.com/DomainKing/status/1122135606392426496

 

[jmcc]

Yes, or whatever... In many non-U.S. cases it converts to their country code tld. Which is something a lot of new gtld operators do not think about, as a matter of fact

There's a niche for NGTs in some countries where the local ccTLD is not well developed. What generally happens is that the ccTLDs start out being run from the Computer Science departments of universities and the cost of these ccTLD domain names tends to be higher than that of some of the discounted NGTs. So what happens is that there's a flurry of registrations from some of these countries. They don't occur across the NGTs. It is much the same way as the .COM developed as the de facto global TLD in the 1990s.

Regards...jmcc

 

[jmcc]

Thanks. Would be nice to know who these end users with websites are, then separate out how many redirect to their real company name in a .Com or .ccTLD.

From the March 2019 survey (non-IDN 23,031,257 ):
3.85% Active/unclassified (887,724)
0.025% Brand protection
0.23% Clone (sites from other TLDs)
0.15% Framed redirect
2.40% External TLD redirect
7.46% Not found/Forbidden
17.41% Holding page
2.88% Internal redirect
0.86% Empty
4.45% Affiliate lander
0.9% Exact match redirect (external TLD)
11.01% PPC
3.27% Sale
5.08% HTTPS redirect (1,171,056)
1.56% Unavailable
0.11% Video affiliate/streamer
7.52% Adult Affiliate
0.01% Compromised/hacked
0.04% Social Media
0.43% Same TLD redirect
27.62% No site/no response

Some categories are not included. The external TLD redirect are sites redirecting to a site in another TLD. The exact match redirect is a site redirecting to the same name site in another TLD.

The level of Sales and PPC varies by gTLD. In US/CA, PPC parking is more common. In the Chinese market PPC parking is not as common and many sites are using affilate landers. The 3.85% Active development percentage and the HTTPS percentage are the important ones. Again, the usage varies across the NGTs. Some NGTs tend to use HTTPS by default. It hasn't worked out well with the Google NGTs because of the problem of people using one certificate for multiple sites.

Here is Rick's recent comments:

Show attachment 117419

The NGTs are bleeding registrations are the moment and that's largely due to heavily discounted registrations not being renewed and, in the case of the ex-Famous Four NGTs, not being replaced. There's still a lot of them to drop yet and the next five months or so will be really bad for some of these NGTs. The real problem with the NGTs isn't that domainers and speculators (whether the registry or other large players) own large numbers of domain names in the NGTs. They don't. The real problem is that discounting in some of the larger NGTs obscures development and usage. The NGTs are a set of generic TLDs, domain hacks and geographical/regional gTLDs. The only thing they have in common is that they are gTLDs.

Regards...jmcc

 

[Bob Hawkes]

The NGTs are a set of generic TLDs, domain hacks and geographical/regional gTLDs. The only thing they have in common is that they are gTLDs.

^^^ This!
I think it is unfortunate that we all lump together the ngTLDs since they have very different natures and roles. Also I think that regional differences in use and perception will continue to be pronounced in most of these.

@jmcc Thank you so much for the data. If a site has content but is configured so that someone who goes to the http is sent to https, does it just get counted as https redirect or as content site?

Bob

 

[tonyk2000]

7.46% Not found/Forbidden

27.62% No site/no response

These numbers are not necessary accurate. I mean that there may be something (not forbidden etc.) shown to human visitors. With tons of bot-powered traffic looking for vulnerabilities or simply grabbing content, I myself pay special attention to block it either on webserver level (403) or even firewall level (no response), and the bot who run "the March 2019 survey" is likely blocked on my servers for example. I simply do not like to waste resources (such as running php as the result of such a visit) for something that I'm not considering as beneficial... (An example of something I carefully blocked would be bots run by various domainer-servicing businesses). Bots are trying to change useagents or ips, but it does not really help Many site owners are doing the same.
So, there may be noticeably more live websites in a block included into "the March 2019 survey".

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

Forbidden response is not rare even for real users...
I get it periodically on various websites where Ukrainian IP ranges are banned by some idiotic software/firewalls...

 

[tonyk2000]

Ukrainian IP

I wanted to ban all mobile 4g UA providers once (by AS), as many bots are run from these IPs, but decided not to... humans (or potential humans) should not be banned under any circumstances. I even allow all Chinese visitors, even though they rarely buy...

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

My internet connection is wired (Eth), not mobile...
But I get such response for many years... this was even before 3G.

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

Regarding Ukrainian buyers...
The highest sale I have seen publicly: ALL.BIZ (~$62K) in 2011.

 

[tonyk2000]

Regarding Ukrainian buyers...
The highest sale I have seen publicly: ALL.BIZ (~$62K) in 2011.

Great one. Yes, the world is not only U.S.... I had a number of gtld sales to buyers from UA/RU and from other ex-USSR countries, nothing close to this range though. All were correct non-mistyped dictionary terms in Russian, correctly transliterated (I know for sure, as I speak this language). By some reason, however, higher %%% of such sales occured to U.S.-based businesses with ex-USSR roots.

Returning to formal subject of this thread: It may well be that this -

There's a niche for NGTs in some countries where the local ccTLD is not well developed.

already happens, or will soon happen, with ex-USSR countries. Last time I checked, retail CCtld prices were abnormally high in this area. There are also discussions about "independent internet" and the like, which may force some registrants to "secure" their online presence in non-CCtld extensions.

 

[lambo.com]

I was surprised to learn today that a non-domainer friend migrated his website to the same name .blog because "for a blog, .blog makes more sense than .com." What about the renewal fee? "$29/yr. Not enough to be a deterrent."
He is an intelligent person who appreciates using the best and the fewest words. Using the self-explanatory TLD makes sense and is worth the extra money, in his opinion.
Maybe the new GLTDs are making inroads with public awareness and will keep gaining market share. What do you think, how do you feel about it?

ngtlds have their place, like a house in a shanty town does in the world.

Not all ngtlds are the same so you have some that are like luxury homes.. But they are still in the ghetto

 

[Bob Hawkes]

"for a blog, .blog makes more sense than .com."

As we have seen, differing viewpoint on the topic of the thread, but I think this quote encapsulates the key issue. I think increasingly discerning organizations will select the domain that is the right fit for their operation rather than a one TLD fits all. A middle sized or larger business for their main website will select .com, because that is the right fit. As we have seen, many developers are seeing .dev as the right fit for them. A cooperative will select .coop. I think increasingly organizations will use .org instead of .com. I think this is all positive - in elegant design all parts of the domain name, including the extension, should have meaningful role beyond being a sign of distinction due to cost.

Thanks for starting the thread, @Leo Angelo!
Bob

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

retails CCtld prices were abnormally high in this area.

I have $6.xx for .com.ua
Sold 2 .com.ua domains: $4.5K and $600 (both are English).

 

[jmcc]

^^^ This!
I think it is unfortunate that we all lump together the ngTLDs since they have very different natures and roles. Also I think that regional differences in use and perception will continue to be pronounced in most of these.

@jmcc Thank you so much for the data. If a site has content but is configured so that someone who goes to the http is sent to https, does it just get counted as https redirect or as content site?

Bob

It is a HTTPS redirect, Bob,
It is important to split them out from simple redirects because it shows possible development. However, not all HTTPS redirects (if a site hasn't a valid cert then most browsers will refuse to connect) have working sites but many do and that makes this category important.

Regards...jmcc

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

Regarding Russia and nTLDs...
Had a few inbound offers + 2 domains (.top & .work, Russian word) sold to the same buyer from Moscow ($973 cumulatively).

 

[jmcc]

These numbers are not necessary accurate. I mean that there may be something (not forbidden etc.) shown to human visitors.

There is an inherent danger in extrapolating your own experience to the wider Web. 21.83% have no website in their DNS record. 6.79% have no response. Just because a domain name has a website IP address listed in its DNS record, it does not necessarily mean that that there is a webserver running on that IP address. Most of the No Response sites that have previously been active are basically sites being pulled because the domain name has not been renewed or the hosting is expired. They are typically lander operations rather than developed websites.

The 403 results are far more likely to be seen on sites where there's an empty web root directory. The 404s are common where there's no content uploaded. Soft 404s (that's where a "no content" page will be displayed rather than the more accurate 404 HTTP result code being issued by the server is quite common now because hosters and registrars use these soft 404s to advertise their services. The number of HTTP 403 results was 361,492. The number of HTTP 404s was 585,193.

The majority of the web is on shared hosting. The set-up of websites is highly automated and often outsourced as ordinary businesses do not build their own websites.

Regards...jmcc

 

[Fancy.domains]

I am pretty sure that domainers still will be able to make good (or great) profit from really good new gTLDs.

And in my opinion, a really good gTLD is a combination of keyword and extension that really makes sense. Example: Biz (dot) community or Book (dot) club.

 

[Bob Hawkes]

like then what happens with .loans filled with Spammers according to Spamhaus.

I know it is easy to confuse, but I think you mean .loan not .loans as according to Spamhaus .loans with 0.4% spam is far better than .com at about 7.8%.

 

[ProDomains]

There are far too many new gTLD's and a number are doomed to failure, I would not stake my business on one.

That said, as long as you have a backup and are only using the new gTLD as a forwarder or something then I am all for it.

There are going to be a lot of businesses caught with their pants down when some of these new gTLD's fail. Country codes and .com's have security, you know they will never shut down. The same cannot be said of ANY new gTLD.

So, are you a gambler?

I agree, there are far too many extensions out now. Some will certainly continue to gain attention and traction from the general public while others fail to exist. Just look at .qpon; it's destined fail. Seriously an abbreviated misspelling of coupon? Has anyone ever purposely abbreviated coupon as qpon? There are only 458 registered domains after nearly 1,800+ days of existence. Of those 458 registered domains, 82 are registered by MarkMonitor solely for brand protection and who knows how many of the remaining 376 are registry owned. Numbers like that are simply not sustainable. I cannot currently find one developed .qpon domain that's not registry owned. Even .qpon would rather use .com with their dotqpon.com.

While rare, it should be noted even country codes aren't safe. During the 2011 Egyptian protests, domain .eg was shut down by the government. Also, country code TLDs may be removed if the country ceases to exist. There are ccTLDs that have been deleted after all: cs (for Czechoslovakia), zr (for Zaire) and tp (for East Timor).

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

There are ccTLDs that have been deleted after all: cs (for Czechoslovakia), zr (for Zaire) and tp (for East Timor).

+ .YU (Yugoslavia).