discuss Is .top worth investing in?

[rayman617]

This new gTLD .top seems to be one of the most popular but are they worth investing in and easily liquidated?

 

[griff]

imo, only if you have knowledge of Mandarin + Chinese cultural trends + use marketplaces like Alibaba

 

[Ivan Rasskazov]

Over 80% are CN registrants - you would have to know underlying dynamics of why it's so popular for CN, or you are just investing blindly which is rarely a recipe for success. The other concern is the registration/deletion numbers over the past 7-90 days isn't looking that great: (NamePulse data)

7 days: about -3.8% growth; 30 days: about -5.8% growth, 90 days: about -9.8% growth. This also needs to be understood. Did a promotion expire? Is there a specific registrant that went under?

Now, there were some reported sales, but it's hard to analyze an extension where most sales likely take place away from usual places like Afternic/Sedo/Uniregistry.

 

[Zilla]

base on my observation, my friends only play .com and .cn plus very short or premium key word in ngtld, .top was hot, now, no one want talk it...

 

[branding]

A check on NB shows a flurry of sales end of June and beginning of July in the upper $xxxx, most originating from the .top registry, and Chinese wordings as the prefix. Would be interesting to know the explanation for that surge. Many of the sales were clumped in the exact same price range, so likely some sort of premium names.

I believe for English names it has been the same, mostly registry sales rather than from investors. Every so often an offer comes in on some of my names, not enough to entice me to sell.
eg
s p i n n i n g / top
n o n s /top

and personally would rather these hold these for the right buyer than a quick sell.

I noticed that big number of registry sales as well a couple of weeks ago. None of them were actually resolving at the time. Stumbled upon it by accident and thought it to be strange. An investor would probably make it resolve to some kind of lander.

 

[mani0307]

I have received 2 offer one of my .top domain $250 and $500
***Oil.top

 

[Zilla]

Because Chinese people only want to be on TOP. There's no other place that's acceptable.. so if your business is TOP, they want it!

my personal view: from Chinese culture view, .top is really a over high profile extention, there was a famous video while a stupid people introduce himself as a TOP designer( and many other TOP titles ) in front of Jack Ma, people just laugh at him just like find the most stupid guy on the earth....too high profile to be respected...

so, well educated business man in China will never call themself the top....if u meet some Chinese always flaunt/display himself as the top,, just stay away from him...our culture encourage low key....so, the failure of .top is foreseeable in my view...

....I have no any relationship(good or bad) with .top company or its staff, I have only 1 .top name which I am going to drop...

just my 2 cents

 

[Bob Hawkes]

An investor would probably make it resolve to some kind of lander.

You would think so, but a surprising number of domains sold in all extensions do not seem to resolve to anything even long after sale. Now a few of them may be future use or defensive or misguided acquisitions, but I continue to be surprised how widespread this is, in .com, new gTLD everything.

Re .top itself for last while, but now more sporadically, the registry report sales above some level via their premium network to NameBio. I am surprised how many and at high values there are. There are also sales reported via traditionsl aftermarket venues. Most sales are Chinese words but a number English. Top usually dominates the list of new gTlD sales in a year, although it will seem less so in 2019.

Now that more new gTLDs are officially approved in China, not sure if that will weaken interest in .top.

I personalky have held a few but never been able to sell above lowish $$. If one looks at under $100 sales in NameBio subscription database I am not alone. I still hold a few hoping that I will sometime find a sale at $$$. At prices to buy and even hold, it is a low expenditure risk.

It is probably partly due to western world biases in the Alexa methodology, but concerning that .top does not find proportionally as many in Alexa 1M as many other extensions.

Bob

 

[lock]

After circus.top was taken I moved on to another gtld

 

[lock]

What new gTLD do you guys recommend investing in for an English speaking market?

The one with the most relevant searches associated with it. eg word + gtld makes that sense and is best of the premium results without too high premium renewals. The most logical word to go in front of the gtld.
Forget 2 words + gtld for now.

 

[kite26]

No

 

[HotKey]

A check on NB shows a flurry of sales end of June and beginning of July in the upper $xxxx, most originating from the .top registry, and Chinese wordings as the prefix. Would be interesting to know the explanation for that surge. Many of the sales were clumped in the exact same price range, so likely some sort of premium names.

I believe for English names it has been the same, mostly registry sales rather than from investors. Every so often an offer comes in on some of my names, not enough to entice me to sell.
eg
s p i n n i n g / top
n o n s /top

and personally would rather these hold these for the right buyer than a quick sell.

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

Why is .top such a hit in China?

Because it is owned, managed and promoted by Chineses.

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

As of today, I sold the only one .TOP for $850 to the buyer from Moscow.
Without GoDaddy - this TLD is a question of luck only.

 

[HotKey]

Can you share what some of your offers were? I'm sitting on a bunch of generic .top names that could fetch a decent price in .biz or .info.

Upper xxx and 1k with the names I gave as example. They fit well with their dot-top extension.

 

[jmcc]

It is at least an 82% Chinese registrations gTLD with, from memory, about 10% US registrations. That means that a lot of English language keyword domain names may not sell well. If you know the Chinese market then it may be worth a gambling on a few registrations but don't expect .COM winnings.

Regards...jmcc

 

[lock]

If you start typing out toptoptoptoptop to infinity you can claim to own the most expensive domain or the illuminati will come after you. (someone will get my humour)

 

[Bob Hawkes]

A check on NB shows a flurry of sales end of June and beginning of July in the upper $xxxx,

It used to be that they reported every week or two but in 2019 seem to just be doing it every few months. Not sure reason for change.

What new gTLD do you guys recommend investing in for an English speaking market?

It is a tough question to answer. Rather than looking at certain TLD I would concentrate on great matches across the dot that you can hold without high premium renewals.

Bob

 

[Josytal]

Another relevant factor you might want to consider is the number of active/indexed websites with .top domain name extension.
For example, you can google:
site:".top"
About 85,300,000 results

site:".club"
About 155,000,000 results

site:".co"
About 815,000,000 results

site:".com"
About 25,270,000,000 results

You can query for other extensions.

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

What new gTLD do you guys recommend investing in for an English speaking market?

What you see on GoDaddy main page...

 

[poweredbyme]

Another relevant factor you might want to consider is the number of active/indexed websites with .top domain name extension.
For example, you can google:
site:".top"
About 85,300,000 results

site:".club"
About 155,000,000 results

site:".co"
About 815,000,000 results

site:".com"
About 25,270,000,000 results

You can query for other extensions.

That query will include undeveloped domains too. You can't know how many of them are developed websites. "site: " doesn't mean site. It will show indexed domains, in other words, all domains with working dns and http server giving http 200 and sometimes 301/302 response.

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

That query will include undeveloped domains too. You can't know how many of them are developed websites. "site: " doesn't mean site. It will show indexed domains, in other words, all domains with working dns and http server giving http 200 and sometimes 301/302 response.

Not even domains...
This command shows the indexed PAGES...

 

[poweredbyme]

Of course they are not 100% accurate.
Be as it may, one common thing I've observed about the results is that, statistically, they are directly proportional to the officially published number of registered domains for the extensions. Unless you have other figures to dispute this.

It will not give "active/indexed websites with .top domain name extension." It will give number of indexed pages as @Jurgen Wolf said and as I said it will not give all registered domains in top extension.
Number of indexed pages are irrelevant to number of registered domain in TLD. Every number has a proportion to another number. That proportion, say 85% or 47% or another, may change over the time and doesn't create a conclusion on its accuracy or relevancy as there is no reliable correlation.

There is no way to find it on google search. Lack of other figure doesn't mean it's more or less accurate. It's an entirely different and irrelevant thing. For instance, 1K sites on top TLD may be totaling 100M indexed pages on google, it will inflate the number by 100M. Dynamic sites may have more than 10x pages on index as category, tags, search, paginations etc pages may get indexed well, no matter how the content is duplicated. Also if linked somewhere, some text files may get indexed as if they are HTML pages as most browsers display those files properly like HTML.

There is no reliable correlation.

 

[lock]

I remember
Where is he now?

The Aluminarti swallowed him up.

 

[rayman617]

Is there any market for English use?