.XYZ: What's the status of this extension now?

[Igor Mironyuk]

When .XYZ launched 3-4 years ago, then it was on the fire. And one word dot xyz domain like Porn.xyz can sell for over 1M or higher.
But now in 2018 What the status of .XYZ gTLD? Up or Down?

 

[bmugford]

Dead.

 

[Brands.International]

https://namestat.org/ (total registrations 1,8 mil )
https://namebio.com/ (sales)

Check it here

 

[Brands.International]

Dead.

It's actually not dead Brad...I would say .us is pretty dead in 2018, but not .xyz

Disclaimer : I own 0 .xyz domains, but still, let's stay factual here...

 

[JB Lions]

When .XYZ launched 3-4 years ago, then it was on the fire. And one word dot xyz domain like Porn.xyz can sell for over 1M or higher.
But now in 2018 What the status of .XYZ gTLD? Up or Down?

Haven't checked in awhile but not looking good - https://namebio.com/?s==YzN3ADO5gTM

winter.xyz 101 USD
movies.xyz 361 USD
jobs.xyz 1,000 USD
designer.xyz 201 USD
cinema.xyz 163 USD
car.xyz 255 USD

Looks just like 10 reported sales over $1,000 this year.

 

[bmugford]

31 total sales for $43K in 2018, out of 2 million regs.

jobs.xyz 1,000 USD 2018-08-21

When that is the upside for a term like Jobs, the extension is essentially dead.

On a side note I sold (1) .US in the last year for close to as much as all the .XYZ sales combined.

Brad

 

[chatzo102]

Poor and dead extension.

 

[Brands.International]

31 total sales for $43K in 2018, out of 2 million regs.

jobs.xyz 1,000 USD 2018-08-21

When that is the upside for a term like Jobs, the extension is essentially dead.

On a side note I sold (1) .US this the last year for close to as much as all the .XYZ sales combined.

Brad

Brad, it is actually not that simple..there are reasons for that imo.

First, names like car and jobs in xyz carries huge renewal fees attached to them, around 1200 / year

I know that they were bought by domain investors (btw, Namepros members if I remember that correctly), who experimented 1 year, and then, to recoup the money, few months prior renewal, they auctioned them in Flippa/Sedo. Most propabably, another domain investors took them for 250 or 1000, and are experimenting further.

So you have to take those large renewal fees into consideration when trying to understand why something like car / xyz sold for 255 ....Those are definitely not end-users sales, those are "carry-overs" of high renewal fee new gTLD domain names between domain speculators, basically

PS: congrats to your .us sale, sounds very nice!

 

[bmugford]

Let's compare .XYZ to .NET, a legacy extension many other people say is on the decline.

In 2018 NameBio shows 1,927 .NET sales for 1,900,000
In 2018 NameBio shows 31 .XYZ sales for 43,000

Even .BIZ had 3x the sales volume and 2x the dollar volume of .XYZ in 2018.
.US had more than 3x the sales volume and 3x the dollar amount.

It is dead.

Brad

 

[Brands.International]

Let's compare .XYZ to .NET, a legacy extension many other people say is on the decline.

In 2018 NameBio shows 1,927 .NET sales for 1,900,000
In 2018 NameBio shows 31 .XYZ sales for 43,000

Even .BIZ had 3x the sales volume and 2x the dollar volume of .XYZ in 2018.
.US had more than 3x the sales volume and 3x the dollar amount.

It is dead.

Brad

But it is not really fair to compare .xyz (one of 1000 new gTLD extensions, which is here for only 3 years) to .net or .us, which are here basically since start of the internet...so imo not dead, I think it is just raising, and most people outside domain circles still do not know there is something like .xyz...

 

[JB Lions]

But it is not really fair to compare .xyz (one of 1000 new gTLD extensions, which is here for only 3 years) to .net or .us, which are here basically since start of the internet...so imo not dead, I think it is just raising, and most people outside domain circles still do not know there is something like .xyz...

It's not "raising" tho. From sales to regs. Jan 1 it was at about 2.6 million, it's down to 2.0 million. And it's not 3 years, it's almost 4.5 years. Averaging 1 reported sale over $1,000 per month, is not good. Look at some of the sales on major keywords, some posted above, low.

Reported sales over $1,000
2018 - 10
2017 - 16
2016 - 72 - some auctions

It's following the usual pattern. Starts up, hype and hope, peaks, settles down some, levels out, drops. I saw that with .me. I only have 1 left, at the peak, probably would have went for 4 figures, can't even get a $69 bid on it today.

 

[Bob Hawkes]

I think many valid points have been made. At 31 sales $43.2k total 2018YTD .xyz does not seem on track to do more than 2017 (60 sales, $49.4k) which was a poor year. There is no doubt that .top with about $2.0 million in sales 2018 YTD is having a far better year, at least if NameBio stats represent the true situation.

One possibility, that we should take into account is that .xyz is predominantly registered (and supposedly resold) in areas of the world that almost certainly are seriously underreported on NameBio (49.9% China, 13.7% US, then Turkey, Vietnam, India, Japan, Indonesia and Russia). Now it is true that .top has an even more skewed geographical base, but the top registry took it upon themselves to report both their own sales and sales through a number of other companies (like Alibaba) while the .xyz people have not. Therefore NameBio may underrepresent .xyz to a greater degree than say .us or .biz or .info.

If we look at 5 year figures (GA started in June 2014) they are much better for .xyz with $1.7 million in sales over 495 domain names (that number still low). For comparison the 5 yr total for US is more sales (846) but only about half sales volume ($915k). Info has a similar volume ($1.6 million) but far more (1945) sales. Biz for the 5 yrs is $709k and 957 sales.

So why has .xyz dropped so much? If you look at the large sales, many of them were premium sales of one and two character names, and simply they are now sold (and were mainly registry sales in any case). The premium renewal issue that @lolwarrior explains is obviously a factor pushing down interest and prices, ironically.

.xyz seems an enigma in that as a domain extension it seems healthy (registration wise, relative use in websites, lack of abuse, stable and reasonable renewal rates for standards). For example, with 2401 in Alexa 1M it leads the ngTLDs, and when you look at 1 Alexa 1M per 781 registrations (NameStat data as of today) it is within a factor of about 2 of .com and better than the majority of the new extensions. But a weak resale market. It may still suffer from the deep promotions in the early year. Will it recover? Not sure. I suspect there will over time be more sales, but most will be in $$$ range.

Of course .xyz is not alone in seeming more an extension success than a resale success. To some degree same could be said of .site and .space and many others that have decent website use on a proportional basis, good lack of abuse, and some stability, but few resales.

There have been a few significant sales in .xyz in the last year or so ($15k by MO for token in August, $7k just under a year ago for jungle, and earlier this year $4k for host are probably the more notable ones I remember) but not many. I would agree with @bmugford that .us has been more promising of late with 2018 major sales for $26k, $12k, $8.4k, $7.5k (by the way congrats on your major sale!).

I would not say .xyz is dead, but then I try to be moderate in all my wording! Napping maybe? Would I personally recommend investing in .xyz? If you can find a strong word without a premium renewal, and are happy to sell in $$$ range, probably. I actually never invested in them until very recently when I picked one up for a future development project, then I did pick up two others for possible resale. You might say why for development, it is an information site and I liked the sense of xyz (I may even structure it alphabetically). I liked that I could get a good word, cheaply, and reasonable renewal rates.

Thanks to @Igor Mironyuk for original question, and to all who have contributed, on both sides. I think a lot of good information has been exchanged.

Bob

 

[robert widener]

might pick up a .xyz just for fun

 

[offthehandle]

Consensus over a year ago appears to remain the same. Even at .88 cents each. Historically cheap domains ruin the entire extensions reputation, inspire phishing, tm infringement, etc. I was a big spender and wasted a whole $5.00 last year Lol.... when .Top sold for $0.58 each! All were sent to adult sites as an experiment if they might rank or get traffic. They didn’t, but all older Com, net and org all indexed and got traffic. I actually think Google distrusts them not only since they are new, but ignores them, very few real .xyz sites rank when I looked into it last year.

https://www.namepros.com/threads/88-cent-domains-how-many-are-you-buying.1021822/

 

[Furquan]

It's actually not dead Brad...I would say .us is pretty dead in 2018, but not .xyz

Disclaimer : I own 0 .xyz domains, but still, let's stay factual here...

It's look like you where to say .xyz pretty dead, not .us


Total .us Sales till date this year, As reported by Namebio

Total .xyz Sales till date this year, As reported by Namebio

Cheers

 

[.X.]

the xyz extension was shit from the beginning IMO, It was supposed to be a modern day version of .info IMO. the only reason to ever register a .xyz is for shits and giggles IMO

FAIL

 

[Recons.Com]

Fun fact

Xyz in Russian is acronym for "Dick knows what" - Xuy Yego Znaet )

 

[- me -]

Like any extension, depends on the domain and a willing buyer.

Token.xyz $14,999 (Sept 2018).

http://www.dnjournal.com/archive/domainsales/2018/20180912.htm

 

[Bob Hawkes]

I actually think Google distrusts them not only since they are new, but ignores them, very few real .xyz sites rank when I looked into it last year.

I know it is debated, but Google at least say they do not take extension into consideration in search results.

Since the parent company of Google use .xyz for their website (https://abc.xyz/), I presume they don't ignore at least that one!

Re few real sites using it: The stats go up and down daily, but as of today there are (NameStat data) 2422 websites using .xyz in the Alexa 1M. That is 1 Alexa 1M site for every 773 registrations. That is not as good as .com (276) and .net (331), but very comparable with .info (519), .us (686) and .biz (996), as well as major country codes (e.g. .de 618). Considering these extensions have all been around much longer than .xyz, it is doing rather well in actual use. All data for these calculations obtained today from https://domainnamestats.com/.

I note that you say when you looked last year. It might have changed over that period, but at least currently, while you can legitimately say .xyz resale market has been slow in recent years, it is inaccurate to say that the extension is not finding traction in use in actual websites, when taken as a proportion of its registration base.

Bob

 

[Bob Hawkes]

Can someone clarify for me, .xyz announced earlier this year three premium tiers ($3000, $700, $350) but with premium prices ONLY in the first year - $10 renewal (details including a spreadsheet list of names in each tier for download available here). But there are still previously sold premiums that carry the higher rate on renewal, right? Or does this apply to all now? Thanks for any clarification from those in the know!

Actually the site also has information on how taken different types of .xyz names are, and other information. Glad I stumbled on it!

Bob

 

[Zilla]

After read all of this, I spend 0.99*2 at dynadot got those 2...make any sense for fun?

MrXYZ。xyz
MrABC。xyz

seriously, I may want use MrABC/xyz for my naming blog, given what we did everyday just playing the game of those 26 letter...

or idealy, it may be can easily brand to a English-Language-Training company to teach people English from ABC to XYZ (as 2nd language I means)...

BTW....XYZ have mutiple very nice chinese meaning while use XYZ as the 3 first letter of chiness Pinyin word..one example is is XiaoYuZhou means Micro-Universe, it describe the inner side of your mind, the inner power of a human being in chinese.

 

[Bob Hawkes]

After read all of this, I spend 0.99*2 at dynadot got those 2...make any sense for fun?

MrXYZ。xyz
MrABC。xyz

seriously, I may want use MrABC/xyz for my naming blog, given what we did everyday just playing the game of those 26 letter...

or idealy, it may be can easily brand to a English-Language-Training company to teach people English from ABC to XYZ (as 2nd language I means)...

BTW....XYZ have mutiple very nice chinese meaning while use XYZ as the 3 first letter of chiness Pinyin word..one example is is XiaoYuZhou means Micro-Universe, it describe the inner side of your mind, the inner power of a human being in chinese.

Actually I like both of those, as they are elegant, short and easy to remember. I personally prefer MrABC as it seems to better imply everything when combined with the extension.

I had no idea about the XiaoYuZhou meaning - it gives me some ideas about possible xyz names I must look into.. Thank you for the insights!

I see that a major site dealing with being mindful and reflective use it as their main site, perhaps drawing on that meaning. Here is link: https://www.edpos.xyz/

Bob

 

[Kate]

But it is not really fair to compare .xyz (one of 1000 new gTLD extensions, which is here for only 3 years) to .net or .us, which are here basically since start of the internet...so imo not dead, I think it is just raising, and most people outside domain circles still do not know there is something like .xyz...

I think the point Brad was trying to make is that if domainers shun .net, a much more established extension, then why would they even consider .xyz.
And I don't think .xyz is rising at all. It's sinking into oblivion and irrelevance like so many others before. Either way I do not consider .xyz investment-worthy at all.

.xyz reminds me a lot about .mobi. Both TLDs were hyped massively.
R Schwarz bought one .mobi for 200K, domainers took his gamble for a vote of confidence and the frenzy started. .mobi keywords valued at 6-figure amounts eventually dropped.

Negari pump and dumped his TLD, helped by the fact that Google bought one for a site that nobody visits. Again people interpreted this move by Google as a vote of confidence, yet Google use lots of different extensions.

The problem is that .xyz isn't even a meaningful string. There are so many strings out there that I cannot fathom how .xyz could be desirable when you have other extensions that are at least semantically relevant and making sense.

You can put lipstick on a pig but the illusion doesn't last forever.

 

[Bob Hawkes]

Google bought one for a site that nobody visits.

@Kate I think a few people do visit that site . It is ranked 10,095 on VisitRank. By comparison two sites that we know and love and we know lots of people visit: NamePros (49,591) and NameBio (95,548). Yes, it is not top 1000, but for a site that is essentially for investor relations and newsletters for Alphabet, it is fairly widely visited.

The problem is that .xyz isn't even a meaningful string.

I am far from an expert in .xyz, but my understanding is that the intention was as a competitor to .info in the sense of "everything in the alphabet". The largest popularity of .xyz is in regions where English is not the first language. In the same ways that numbered domains are popular in these regions, and short letter acronyms, I can see the argument to use something like .xyz as an extension.

Also, just in case you missed earlier in this thread, @Zilla kindly provided this that I did not know:

BTW....XYZ have mutiple very nice chinese meaning while use XYZ as the 3 first letter of chiness Pinyin word..one example is is XiaoYuZhou means Micro-Universe, it describe the inner side of your mind, the inner power of a human being in chinese.

.xyz reminds me a lot about .mobi. Both TLDs were hyped massively.

Personally I don't regard any other extension as comparable to the .mobi hype. The .tech world was all abuzz that each website would need two forms, and that one of those would be on .mobi. No matter how much hype on any other extension, I don't think it had the same level of you NEED this extension that .mobi was pushed (and off course adaptive technology made that situation change quickly).

By the way, I agree with your initial point. If you feel that .com is the only thing, or at least the thing with best investment prospects, and you don't consider .net, I would totally agree that it is consistent to also not consider .xyz (and indeed all other ngTLDs). It absolutely makes sense for the majority of domain name investors to ignore .xyz (and other ngTLDs). But it also makes sense that some will invest in them.

I think the point Brad was trying to make is that if domainers shun .net, a much more established extension, then why would they even consider .xyz.

Bob

ps As someone not (very) active in domains at the time, I did not know about the flowers (mobi) purchase by RS. Thanks for pointing that out, which caused me to find the post about his reasoning, which is in this link in case someone else is interested too.

 

[Brands.International]

I think the point Brad was trying to make is that if domainers shun .net, a much more established extension, then why would they even consider .xyz.
And I don't think .xyz is rising at all. It's sinking into oblivion and irrelevance like so many others before. Either way I do not consider .xyz investment-worthy at all.

.xyz reminds me a lot about .mobi. Both TLDs were hyped massively.
R Schwarz bought one .mobi for 200K, domainers took his gamble for a vote of confidence and the frenzy started. .mobi keywords valued at 6-figure amounts eventually dropped.

Negari pump and dumped his TLD, helped by the fact that Google bought one for a site that nobody visits. Again people interpreted this move by Google as a vote of confidence, yet Google use lots of different extensions.

The problem is that .xyz isn't even a meaningful string. There are so many strings out there that I cannot fathom how .xyz could be desirable when you have other extensions that are at least semantically relevant and making sense.

You can put lipstick on a pig but the illusion doesn't last forever.

I personally have 0 .xyz in my portfolio. But any good keyword in this extension can sell for mid XXXX in 2018, of course with certain probabilities.

So my approach to this is : if I can grab (drop-catch, trade, whatever) good keyword in xyz while it has standard 10 renewal, I will do it and will probably renew it few years in advance. I mean really good keywords, like homes, mortgage, loans, etc. Why not