discuss .us vs .eu - Would state tlds work?

[dirk]

There has been some debate recently about the uprise of cctlds and the decline of populairity of .com. True or not we cannot argue that cctlds are in high demand these days and I think we can all agree that as for now .com is the safe choice, especially when it comes to domain investing.

Anyway, on this particular subject I'd like to look at these two extentions from an enduser perspective. I've always felt the .us extention is a weak one but so is .eu in comparison. I guess the reason for this is that both tlds connot really be concidered 'real' cctlds as both are used for an 'union' of states or countries. Therefore it lacks the power of a 'true' cctld.

This assumption may be the reason why europe has a couple of very strong and in demand cctlds which raises my question: If the usa would have cctlds for each state, would you use them? Would it appeal to you as an enduser? Being an european I'd pick cctld > com/net/org > eu but would you as an American pick com/net/org > statetld > us if a state tld existed?

 

[dirk]

I checked .com registrations per country against the total of domains registered in the corrsponding ccTLD. Could be more accurate and the data used is a couple of months old but it should paint a decent picture.

 

[Bob Hawkes]

I checked .com registrations per country against the total of domains registered in the corrsponding ccTLD. Could be more accurate and the data used is a couple of months old but it should paint a decent picture.

That is really interesting. Thank you so much for the effort. So to be sure I am interpreting this correctly if you look at say Switzerland there are about 4x as many country code as .com registered? Interesting how low it is in countries like Poland and Sweden.

 

[dirk]

That is really interesting. Thank you so much for the effort. So to be sure I am interpreting this correctly if you look at say Switzerland there are about 4x as many country code as .com registered? Interesting how low it is in countries like Poland and Sweden.

Thats correct. Could've structured it a bit better but have been doing this while cooking . As for the cctld number of registrations, I cannot confirm if they were actually registered by someone from that country so numbers may be a bit of. Like, the total of .co registrations definitely are not held by Columbian residents . that's an extreme ofcourse.

 

[cipcip]

So if we count only the countries that have 1 million + .com registration, then we have only France, Germany, Spain and UK.

Interestingly enough, when I was in Spain last year in vacation, I haven't seen any .com adverts anywhere... Maybe there are just domainers that want to flip them ? Who knows...

 

[dirk]

Yeah, Spain surprised me as well. Could be a language thing... I dunno.

These numbers don't represent domains that are actually in use. From the top of my head that's about 1.7M for the .nl extension where there are roughly 4.3M registrations so it is a big factor. Most .nl domains not in use are held by Dutch domainers but it could be different for other ccTLDs.

For instance, for .de there's probably a bigger % of registrations held by foreigners as it's a way bigger market thus more profitable to invest in.

 

[Kate]

Under .us you can get third level registrations ie .wy.us .nv.us etc - they have been in use from the very early days. Fourth level domains are also common, plus .k12.us. But I don't know whom to ask (who is your 'local' .us administrator). Secretaries of State typically use names like state.nv.us but a lot have moved to .gov.

 

[Recons.Com]

Yeah, Spain surprised me as well. Could be a language thing... I dunno.

These numbers don't represent domains that are actually in use. From the top of my head that's about 1.7M for the .nl extension where there are roughly 4.3M registrations so it is a big factor. Most .nl domains not in use are held by Dutch domainers but it could be different for other ccTLDs.

For instance, for .de there's probably a bigger % of registrations held by foreigners as it's a way bigger market thus more profitable to invest in.

Maybe, some Spanish islands used for offshore by large domain investors and/or registry?