opinion Notice anything odd about new-gTLD growth rates?

[000]

If you've ever looked at the growth rates for new-gTLD registrations, you may have noticed strange spikes in numbers at one or more points in a gTLD's short history. For example, the .xyz registry recently doubled in size virtually overnight (they went from under 3 million domains on May 30 to 6+ million on June 2).

As a domain investor, I like to look for steady growth if I'm to be convinced that the numbers aren't fudged or inflated by giveaways or crazy deals. To me, steady growth is a good signal that demand is likely to increase in the future.

Below is a graph (compiled today at ntldstats.com) showing the growth of the Top 12 New gTLD's (by current domain count).

Notice anything unique about the last one?

It's no coincidence that my two favorite gTLD's (.club and .online) both show steady growth. Of course, .online is certainly unique in the extremely consistent pattern of its ascent - and let's not forget that it's also one of the youngest gTLD's to make the list.

Any other observations or thoughts on this data?

 

[HotKey]

Cross-reference those spikes with the dates, you might likely find is when super sales on registrations occured. In fact, I think that's exactly what happened in the .xyz case, it was their one or two year anniversary or something. The jumps probably domainers, steady growth would indicate more endusers jumping aboard.

The great thing in looking at this is the fact that the new TLD's are most definitely gaining traction, regardless of who's registering them.

 

[000]

The great thing in looking at this is the fact that the new TLD's are most definitely gaining traction, regardless of who's registering them.

For sure! I'm seeing new gTLD's pretty frequently nowadays "in the wild". Just down the road from me near Denver, a church promotes their FAITH.CHURCH website prominently on their electronic sign by the road. Anyone still in denial about the new gTLD's should really do some new research. Of course some areas will be much slower to adopt them (and perhaps new technology in general), but they're a-comin'!

 

[HotKey]

Yup, I opened up my paper the other day, was pleased to see one of the city's more well-known real-estate agents have his website printed as HomeEvaluation.Today. One of the first gTLD I've seen used in high-exposure.

I think no matter what growth or spikes we as domainers will see or want to see, it's important to note that for endusers they have real options now to paint a complete picture over the entire url. And it could be using an extension that we don't even see coming.

 

[Rainmaker-NL]

.online is also one of my favorites and Im very pleased to see that it will be entering the top 10 within a week and the growth is very steady. Even with the crazy 0.88 from Namecheap the growth remained steady. .online seems to be especially popular in Europe, not in China, which is good news in my opinion. Top 10 without the aid of Chinese mass investors.

 

[ttfan]

While I'm a fan of .online, I do think one of the reasons of it's steady growth is that it's been around for less than a year, so no-one has dropped any yet.

 

[Rainmaker-NL]

While I'm a fan of .online, I do think one of the reasons of it's steady growth is that it's been around for less than a year, so no-one has dropped any yet.

Drops after one would explain a drop in registrations in a graph. Yet in this case we see sudden increases in registrations with the other gtlds. So even if there would be a drop after a year, the graph of .online is much steadier than the others.....

 

[jmcc]

If you've ever looked at the growth rates for new-gTLD registrations, you may have noticed strange spikes in numbers at one or more points in a gTLD's short history. For example, the .xyz registry recently doubled in size virtually overnight (they went from under 3 million domains on May 30 to 6+ million on June 2).

The .xyz new gTLD is locked into a boom and bust cycle where it has to keep promoting and discounting in order to keep the number of new registrations ahead of the drops.

As a domain investor, I like to look for steady growth if I'm to be convinced that the numbers aren't fudged or inflated by giveaways or crazy deals. To me, steady growth is a good signal that demand is likely to increase in the future.

Very dangerous. All that is going to tell you is the number of domains in the zone. It won't tell you how the domains are being used, the level of usage and developent in the TLD or where it is being used.

That last point is important. TLDs don't exist in isolation. They exist in a market where other TLDs are used and registered. A lot of the domaining value of new gTLD domains at the moment is based on the equivalent registration in .com or a .ccTLD.

Taking all new gTLDs as a single entity might make for pretty numerology graphs but it is not comparing like with like. This is because the new gTLDs were generally launched at different times. Some have gone through their first year anniversary drops (the Junk Dump phase) and others have not even gone that far. But most of them are niche TLDs targeting specific markets. The extension acts as a limiter in much the same way as the extension of a ccTLD. It identifies the market and the niche. And ccTLDs have very different dynamics to large generic TLDs like .COM.

Regards...jmcc

 

[mwzd]

What tld (.com / cctld / ntlds ) fanboys fail to understand is that the TLD is not what gives you returns, it's the domain name you own. While the TLD affects the price, it doesn't affect your bottomline unless you're part of the registry.