new gtlds .Top has lost ≈2,5 million names in just six months

[Fancy.domains]

Hello,

I personally think the .Top Registry are not very happy with this development:

1.Top has lost ≈2,5 million domains from it's zonefile in just six months. As today it's below 1,8M.

2. Reported aftermarket sales (Namebio / Dnpric.es) are down to almost zero in 2017.

3. Not one .top name is included in DN Journal's: "Non .Com gTLD Year-to-Date Top 100 Sales Chart" in 2017.

4. .Top Registry have not published any news on their website since november 2016. Before this, they were updating this section very frequently.

Sources: Namestat.org - Namebio.com - Dnpric.es - Dnjournal.com

 

[dordomai]

my guess is .top is only selling in China and to the mysterious @DOMAIN ILLUMINATI group

 

[Fancy.domains]

my guess is .top is only selling in China and to @DOMAIN ILLUMINATI

Maybe, haha. But it is also clear that the Chinese are dropping loads of them. Currently 30 - 40,000 names a day! Not very surprising though as declined interest in "chips" and so on.

 

[Fancy.domains]

Just to be clear:

Am I "happy" because of this, just because I have no .top names in my portfolio anymore?

No, not at all. I stand neutral. However, updated statistics, market trends and transparency are obviously important factors for us as domainers. Regardless of the extension.

Ps. No .xyz names are included in DN Journal's: "Non .Com gTLD Year-to-Date Top 100 Sales Chart" in 2017 either.

 

[garptrader]

If you look at the chart over the ten months or so when .TOP peaked at nearly 4.8 million registrations (three million drops in less than a year or approximately 60%), .TOP has been in a continual decline since then. The trend of ongoing drops has not abated so it seems like the TLD is headed much lower. Why? Well, the word "top" in English usually precedes what is being described as in the college football rankings - top 25 or top 10. Most registrations are in China where TOP isn't even a word . The Chinese use non-English characters. Domains get renewed when sales help pay renewals. When there are no sales, registrations drop. It appears .TOP is headed into the gutter.

Note .TOP is one of several nTLDs which are experiencing this trend. Meanwhile,which TLD continues to show the most sales in the weekly reports?

 

[Registry Services]

I think one of the biggest issues for most nGTLDs is the very high level of parked domains - typically around 60%. I hear a lot of these are held by the registry, but a lot are also held by investors, who will simply not renew if they see no future.

Until the registry can get a bigger uptake in the end user community there will continue to be a lot of volatility.


A lot of nGTLDs had big promotions just over a year ago (most notable XYZ) and very few of these promotion purchasers seen to have renewed - so the last few months has seen a lot of clearing out - about 6M names since Apr-2017

Now TOP is one of the few nGTLD in the top-10 that is still seeing large drops in numbers, which is offsetting the small increases seen by others, leaving the overall total stable at about 23.3M

The "silicon valley" model of getting in big numbers and worry about profit later, doesn't seem to have worked for the nGTLDs, but now many are starting to put in slow but steady growth, their future looks more promising.

https://ntldstats.com/

 

[urlurl]

makes sense, the names are being registered by the thousands for a buck or two, when the renewal time comes along and they don't want to pay the renewal fee which is usually 3 to 10 times the purchase price the name is then dropped.

 

[Fancy.domains]

makes sense, the names are being registered by the thousands for a buck or two, when the renewal time comes along and they don't want to pay the renewal fee which is usually 3 to 10 times the purchase price the name is then dropped.

Yep + the fact that 4L chips (in .top) no longer are considered to bear any liquid value.

 

[Registry Services]

Yep + the fact that 4L chips (in .top) no longer are considered to bear any liquid value.

Even 4L dot-COMs that are basically random are showing little value these days.

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

Before 2017 almost or even all 4L.TOP were for Premium fee... then standard renewal...
Only this year many of them are available for standard regfee...

 

[GoKaizen]

@TOP Registry?

 

[jmcc]

I think one of the biggest issues for most nGTLDs is the very high level of parked domains - typically around 60%. I hear a lot of these are held by the registry, but a lot are also held by investors, who will simply not renew if they see no future.

I don't consider the methodology used by NTLDstats to "measure" parking to be reliable or accurate.

The reality is that majority of domain names in almost any gTLD will be unused for websites. One new gTLD has a web usage percentage of approximately 0.31%. The gTLDs that have engaged in massive discounting have low usage rates and, even worse, most of these heavily discounted registrations will not renew. Some of the Chinese new gTLDs are toxic TLDs in that they have very little natural development and high levels of landing pages and webspam. Without heavy discounting, some new gTLDs would have a fraction of the number of registrations that they have currently.

Now TOP is one of the few nGTLD in the top-10 that is still seeing large drops in numbers, which is offsetting the small increases seen by others, leaving the overall total stable at about 23.3M

The zone counts for new gTLDs is still around 20.7 million. The NTLDstats thing of not providing accurate zone counts leads people to think that some new gTLDs are doing a lot better than they are in reality. The .TOP gTLD is still a major player in terms of registration volume but it will have low renewals of discounted domain names from last year.

Regards...jmcc

 

[Fancy.domains]

.Top continues to drop thousands of regs every day. Now it is below 1,75M in total.

 

[Registry Services]

.Top continues to drop thousands of regs every day. Now it is below 1,75M in total.

100K from Alpnames!! But Alibaba holding OKish

 

[Fancy.domains]

Now below 1,7M...

 

[-EM-]

I'd say this TLD is not going to be unde 1M. The market they wanted to achieve (China) knows about this TLD already. Considering the population of the market and if they keep the prices low the TLD will survive.

 

[Fancy.domains]

I'd say this TLD is not going to be unde 1M. The market they wanted to achieve (China) knows about this TLD already. Considering the population of the market and if they keep the prices low the TLD will survive.

Sounds reasonable. And to be fair, 1,7M names is not that bad either.