Morning Folks!!
When I look at a particular GTLD and their numbers I look for certain things. Mostly I look to see who the middleman is to see how strong a GTLD might be. As I have previously stated if it's not Godaddy, I raise an eyebrow since the are the #1 Registrar in the world and when I talk to just everyday people, it is Godaddy that they use. Almost exclusively for consumers and end users.
Here are some examples.
I started with #15 .stream. Over 97% of all registrations (284,921) are registered with NameCheap. Godaddy is #6 with 398. Huh? Why? Isn't that curious?? I am curious. If the #1 registrar in the world has 0.14% I am curious why? No end users?
Then I decided to dig a little deeper with the top 10 new GTLD's which combined have 11.5 Million Registrations. Slightly more than half of all new GTLD registrations. Godaddy had just 710,000 of those registrations. Not even close to 10%. Hovering around 7%.
220,000 regs were .xyz and 231,000 were .club and 144,000 were .online. Leaving the remaining 120,000 divided among the other 7 of the top 10.
The only extension of those that Godaddy was #1 is with .online
So I can't help but think how many of these registrations are, well let's just say "Questionable". I question whether they are registrations by registries themselves. I question if there are only a handful buying most of the domains. I question whether some are warehousing domains to pump up their numbers and to help keep foolish domainers buying more. I question whether these were giveaways.
I'm a numbers guy. Numbers paint pictures. And some pictures make little sense. There are questions to ask. Of all new GTLD's how many are owned by domainers? How many are owned by the registry? How many are owned by closely held companies, friends or family? And finally how many are being used by end users. HINT: The smallest group is the last group.
So when you take the 22MM registrations and break it down, the picture could not be uglier and the 22MM is far from a real number. It's fake because of all the shenanigans.
They smothered their own golden goose that was made of tin to begin with and now they have cornered the market except there is no market! There is no demand. There is no need. And nobody in the universe wakes up in the morning desiring a new GTLD except some demented domainers.
It was a clusterf*ck in 2013. It's a clusterf*ck in 2018 and it will be a clusterf*ck in the future. We now have a winner of the demolition derby and so far the winner is NONE! 5 years into this and who is the clear leader? NOBODY! Easier to pick out the clear losers however there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them. There are over 100 GTLD's that have less registrations than .horse. HA!
Go look at the disaster known as .Best. First of all the word "Best" comes first. Best this, best that. Their extension is ass backwards and so are their numbers. They lost 15% of their registrations yesterday. In 4 YEARS they have managed to now have 2700 registrations after topping out at 3274 more than a year ago. Just more domainers losing $$$$.
The bottom 250 extensions had a net loss but I don't have the time or desire to look at how many. I just see big numbers in red for deletes and tiny single digit green numbers that show registrations. It's remarkable. I also have to go to #91, .Art to find ONE SINGLE GTLD that had 100 registrations yesterday. Just 31 out of 500+ had 100 registrations or more. While deletions were a whopping 80,000+.
Any way you want to slice it, GTLD's are bleeding and bleeding badly. Their future is not bright, it is bleak and dark. Many are abandoning their plans of even using them and they paid for them. 500, 600 1000 extensions and so far, nothing meaningful in all these years. Not a single one has broken out or even shown any promise.
A stopped clock is right twice every single day of the year. Making money in GTLD's is the same. It's by accident. It will happen every once in a while. But that does not make YOUR clock work or have any value.
And I discount ALL REGISTRY SALES! ALL!!! If it's not a private domain investor that made the sale, there was no sale the way I JUDGE this game.
Have a GREAT Day!!
Rick Schwartz
John
I absolutely loved this post, and am not just saying that because of who you are by any means, and thanks for compiling all this valuable info.
>”Many are abandoning their plans of even using them and they paid for them.”
I’m still not done abandoning a few I paid relatively big bucks for either, up to $x,xxx, and that’s as an end user, not someone who’s primary intent was to sell. It’s game over. I’m still keeping only what I regard to be the best of the best, the clock-is-right-twice-a-day ones only.
Zumbar
WOW .realty had about 50,000 registrations on day 1, but not much since.
What are these ? https://ntldstats.com/tld/realty
Mark Thorpe
Lots of shenanigans going on with .top as well.
Snoopy
Take the godaddy number on just about any new tld, multiply by 2X and that is approximately the number of real registrations.
If you take new tld’s overall Godaddy has 2.2 million registrations, I think 80% of the ntlds are fake registrations of one type or another (registry reserved, free or 1 cent names etc).
Snoopy
One other thought on this. Icann originally prediction 200 million ntld registrations. They got 20 million. But if most of the 20 million are fake we are down to 2% of the volume they expected (4 million divided by 200 million).
Its almost a washout.
New gTLD’s Are in Serious MELTDOWN Mode. Breaks below Nov. 2019 Levels and Dwindling! | The Rick Schwartz Domain Name and Traffic Blog: RicksBlog.com - Home of The Domain King®
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