Morning Folks!
The top 10 new GTLD's control 55% of all the registrations. Leaving the other 45% to split among more than 500 others. Do you realize how bad that is? Honestly, do you?? It gets worse when you consider how useless these top 10 extensions are. And they are all bleeding unless they have a penny promotion or some such thing.
#1 .Top.....Should be on Bottom. Godaddy has ZERO .Top regs.
#2 .xyz.....From nearly 7 Million registrations by way of Stuffing Netsol accounts and penny sales. Google could not save. Now down to 2 million.
#3 .loan.....Out of nearly 2.2 Million registrations, Godaddy has a total of 848. And with their ONE REGISTRATION yesterday, Godaddy was tied for most productive beating out 78 other registrars including 12 that had domains drop (489 was top drop) and all the others with zero.
#4 .Club.....What can you say? These guys work the hardest and smartest and still can't make a dent. Zone file shows 1.163 Million. Seems they have been around 1 million for years now.
#5 .online.....Showed some interest and early hope but appears to be diminishing. Godaddy is the #1 registrar, but lost 894 just yesterday. It rounds out the top 5 as the only ones with 1 Million or more regs.
6 .site.....Steady growth but Godaddy only has 5% of all registrations.
7 .VIP.....Flatlining and going nowhere but down.
8 .shop.....Tailing off after peaking in early November.
9 .ltd.....Peaked at 730k registrations. Down to 468k now. Nearly 80% parked. Meaningless!
10 .work.....Pretty steady growth. May have peaked. Godaddy is #2 registrar but with only 6.3% of the registrations.
More and more of the biggest GTLD proponents are finally admitting their disappointment in GTLD's. There is no denying the failure at this point 6 years into it. Epic failure. Deserved failure because it was done for all the wrong reasons. It was based on a LIE!
As I predicted here and only here, so many new GTLD's would "DIE ON THE VINE"! You ain't seen nothin' yet! Are you keeping track?? While a handful have fallen in 2018, HUNDREDS more will follow. MANY in 2019. It's physically impossible not to and even the ones that don't die on the vine won't make it viable. You have 400 extensions with less than 20,000 registrations and they are losing more than they are gaining day after day. How long does that last before the numbers destroy you?
Yesterday only 22 of the top 100 gained registrations. 2 of the top 10. So, 78 of the 100 lost and their number was HUGE in comparison!!! 70% drops, 30% regs. Yesterday about 30,000 new registrations and a whopping 99,000 deletes.
The next 100 had 72 losing and 28 gaining. However the GRAND TOTAL of gains was 221. That's 221 spread over 100 extensions!! 2.1 per day average! But the drops are at 2300. 10x more!!! Losing 2.3 a day! . About 47,000 drops and about 27,000 registration. Many are going BYE BYE!
It gets even worse! I am going to PROVE that at least 350 extensions and probably more will either DIE ON THE VINE or be taken over by another registry. Other registries are not buying them because they are good, they buy because of their own problems. Trying to save face themselves. NUMBERS DON'T LIE!! PEOPLE LIE! Consolidation is coming. Massive consolidation. Will end up with a handful of companies controlling all the GTLD's as many run for the hills. GAME OVER!!
Of the next 100 there were 35 that had gains. Those 35 had a total of 270 between them. However they also had 975 drops. They are all going BYE BYE!
The next 100 had 27 gaining and 73 losing. The gains had a total of 119 registrations vs 900 drops. They are all going BYE BYE!
The next 100 had 19 gains and 81 losing. The total gain was 62 TOTAL registrations spread over 100 extensions and the drops were 328. They are all going BYE BYE!
This discussion is not even about the extensions themselves. We are just talking NUMBERS and GRAVITY!!! The merits of each is the next layer and believe me, that won't help save them. That will just guarantee their demise before we even talk about the HUNDREDS of other pitfalls. If a domainer does not see the pitfalls, they ain't looking very hard or very seriously.
I started writing about this "Stampede" a very long time ago. 5 years ago as a matter of fact this month. If they read that and then read "The Rick Schwartz Equation" (also from 2014) they will see just who got what right and how wrong the NOISE was! How about my 20th Anniversary post devoted to GTLD's? Dare they read and compare?? Or will those folks keep whistling part the graveyard?
How many bought into this bag of crap. They all got fooled and scammed! Swallowed their crap, Hook, Line and stinker. And I don't feel sorry for the gullible. Tho I feel bad that they wasted their families money chasing nonsense. Chasing yesterday. Trying to repeat something that was not only not possibly repeatable, they changed the entire recipe and expected the same result. That's INSANE!
The LONG DREADED GTLD DETOUR IS NEARLY OVER AND DEAD! HOPE THOSE EXTENSIONS ALL ROT IN HELL!!
Rick Schwartz
John
I only bought a small number, with no illusions. In fact I’ll bet even many less than you did. I hate most of the new TLDs now, however, and I say that as a user, let alone investor. I still like a few though, but in most cases only for a ridiculously small number of domains, not the whole TLD itself. I dropped almost everyone I originally got, even one I had a site on for a while.
Recently got a free .online, and I hate .online overall (sorry), except for a microscopic few domains I didn’t get. I had already dropped every .online I had before, but it made sense to take it free for a year.
One that I still like personally as an end user in commerce which people have seen me mention before is .gold. During early access, I also noticed Mike Berkens got Buying.Gold, which his company still has. Based on when he got it during EAP, I would estimate he paid around $3k, give or take a bit. I’ve written about .gold before, so won’t rehash it all here, but one can read recent comments over in the troll festival that occurred here this week: https : // domainnamewire . com/2019/01/02/year-in-review-record-new-tld-sales/. Definitely will not apologize for liking .gold no matter what happens.
I have said before: the “money grab model” of release has been catastrophic and fairly dooming as far as I’m concerned. Not even end users want to pay ridiculous reg prices, with no protection, no regulation, etc. Sure, there are exceptions, but there are always exceptions. How does the big picture look with those exceptions? Not very good.
.com is still king by a million miles, and I believe that perhaps after not much longer now the American public will discover the sleeping giant .us even exists. And it’s a both/and world, not either/or, so that is no threat to .com, except that there are rare examples where a specific .us would be greater than its .com counterpart (okay troll me now). I say that about ccTLDs in general too – i.e. some isolated cases can sometimes rival, match, or even exceed the throne, though most certainly not just any ccTLD.
John
PS, and as I have also made clear before, I am also an end user on .us, not just an investor, and I have the international traffic to prove that while the American public practically doesn’t even know it exists (with some exceptions of course), the rest of the world certainly does know. Especially a number of big player regions.
Mark John Thorpe
Hard to believe .US is not used more in America.
.Ca is used a lot here in Canada.
Rick Schwartz
If it was .USA, may have been an entirely different result.
John
Yes I definitely agree with that. It is almost certain “they” could never have kept .USA from being a blockbuster winner all these years.
I consider it more or less certain the .US status quo since 2002 has been by design, and Neustar has taken its marching orders from the US government while making the occasional gesture and appearance.
Some people have (mistakenly) thought the state of .US has depended on the registry and that registry inaction is to blame. I say that’s nonsense. The registry has nothing to do with it. Since day 1 it has always been up to Uncle Sam himself. A single word, a single wave of his hand, virtually no cost whatsoever to this very day, practically not even a single penny, is all it ever would have taken, still to this very day. And especially this very day in the new age of Twitter. Virtually a single word to the American people is all that it would take, though so much more could also have been done at virtually no cost as well.
Instead, it was clear from the very beginning in 2002 that .US was being slipped into society in its current form “under a rock,” and has been kept that way ever since. And while some may wonder why, to me it is as plain as day, and though sadly, no surprise I guess.
The biggest irony is the timing of this virtually surreptitious insertion. The very wake of the biggest explosion of resurgent patriotism the country has ever seen since World War II, and for all we know may ever see in our lifetime. So ironic. If there was ever a reason and ever an incentive to have said the single word and lifted the single finger it would only have taken to arouse the American public it was then, and every day since.
Not allowing a whois privacy option all these years also has a “chilling effect” as well, and they surely know it. There is no good reason for that. They don’t even enforce the nexus requirement, but even if they did there is nothing simpler than enabling and ensuring 21st century immediate and full data access to those who need to have it 24 hours a day.
I don’t know if Uncle Sam will ever do what could so easily be done, but regardless I doubt things can go on this way forever insofar as “organic” awakening and awareness goes. And doubtless many working in his house, their friends, beneficiaries and benefactors don’t want that still.
domain guy
wow, I never really consider .usa. I always thought shorter was better. So what happened here no market research? Three letters could be compared to .com?
John
There would be confusion and/or conflict with .US. For that reason alone ICANN is likely to never allow it. Conversely, it would be entirely and egregiously unjust to those who have already invested up to 16 years and more of time, money and life in .US – unless it is released in a way that properly addresses that. For that reason alone as well, the only just way of implementing .USA would be the way .UK has been implemented relative to .co.uk and other .example.uk TLDs. That also means basic regulated “reg fee,” not unregulated money-grabbing premiums which would effectively amount to extortion and blackmail for existing .US registrants. With that in mind, as a patriotic American among other things I would love to see .USA – only if it is done this way.
Bret
It seems to me that .US would be a logical choice for any company doing business in the USA (if they can’t have the .com). There might be confusion over the thousand gTLDS that exist, but there can’t be any confusion over geography with ccTLDs. (I’ve seen many sites using .ca, .au, .uk, .de so I assume that ccTLDs have value, but not the global reach of .com) The problem is you have make the consumer aware that your site is .us, and not .com. But once they understand that, they can’t forget they’re dealing with a us entity. And that might even be an advantage for some consumers who want to deal with a us company.
Snooy
.us is garbage, already have a cctld, the best one in the world! .com.
John
Thanks, “Snooy.” This thread was sorely (refreshingly) lacking in trolling, so you came at just the right time to save the day while we were all so deprived.
Proverbs 26:4-5.
Steve B
.COM is the extension for the US. We don’t need 2. Although I notice some local government agencies using .US
Staff
The eye naturally travels from left to right (Z or S pattern) & most of nGTLD words that are at the end of a line (right of the dot), without the dot (closing), will no longer make it the end of a meaning. Rock.Stars vs RockStars.com
Regards
Suresh Raghavan
Thanks Rick for the summary. Appreciate your insights.
Dan
Some of these extensions could have been much more successful if a different selling strategy was used.
Take for example .online. I find it amazing that they managed to reach 1M registrations even though they either reserved or marked as “premium” almost every conceivable keyword that may be remotely useful or have value.
I remember trying to find good domains to register during their EAP, and I was not able to find even one. Most of the good ones were reserved, and the ones that were not were being offered for tens of thousands of dollars (with the same renewal!).
If all domains in this extension were offered for $8, without premiums or reserved domains, I would not be suprised if they had 10 million registrations by now.
Now, on the other hand, you have many extensions that are limited to one particular industry/sector. Take for example .cleaning. It is invalid to compare the number of registrations of this kind of extension with generic extensions like .com, .online, etc. given that the extension only caters to a small subset of the universe of possible domain users. A more accurate way to measure the success of this type of extension would be to compare the number of .cleaning domains to the number of cleaning.com domains. Or the number of developed sites in each.
Rick Schwartz
They smothered their own extensions by holding back the premiums and now it is too late to be important.
They did not allow a marketplace to develop. There was no oxygen. But registries made quick money and that was all THEY cared about. Not the .com model. Not even close.
Richard K.
“They smothered their own extensions by holding back the premiums” Couldn’t agree with you more here Rick.
They released the scraps and withheld anything that could have made their tld’s and in turn their brand more relevant by getting it out and in use or into the marketplace in general.
Seems like really poor foresight and greed won out over smart business.
Snoopy
Domainers would have smothered it if renewals were $8. It is too late for any new extension regardless of what the registry does, 30 years too late, the market is now developed and mature.
At best they might find some small niche market. Even .web has no chance of even getting 1% market share.
Russell
Hello Rick,
I have “Insurance.Enterprises” and I think this brand name is great and catchy, so I will renew it. $29 per yr
I also have another new gtld name “Get.tours” renewal of $35 not sure about this one… please advise to renew or not to renew.
Best,
Russell P.
Rick Schwartz
Well, I see more value in Get.Tours than in Insurance.Enterprises
But I think both are a waste of time, money and energy when you have a depressed .com market to chase after.If you pay attention to LIFE, new .com sectors and domains are BORN every single day.
How many people on planet EARTH do you think know there is even a .enterprise or is it enterprises????
I didn’t know about it until your post.
You will either be be dead 120 years before the common man ever hears of it or the extension will die on the vine. I would bet on the latter.
#257 on the hit parade. Flatlining. Came out in 2014. Only took me 5 years to hear about it and I do this for a living. They added 800 total registrations in 4 years. Now standing at 6558.
An 11 letter extension. How Enterprising!! lol Just like .Com
It’s owned by Donuts and they will probably be buying all the ones that die on the vine as a way to protect themselves. They will own 400 of 500 GTLDS within 10 years IMHO. If not them, then .xyz or alike. But it won’t be to promote, it will simply be self preservation. I mean how would it look to investors if 350 GTLD’s just COLLAPSED??? The fallout would be far reaching.
Russell
Thank you very much for your response.
I found comparable domains sold:
“get.education” – sold for $400,
“get.digital” – sold for $1,100.
Source: godaddy.com/domain-value-appraisal
Best,
Russell P.
Rick Schwartz
So the extension has no value.
The only value is the keyword left of the dot.
Don Murray
Not much else you can say about these extensions that you have not already said for 6 years. Having hope is fine but no miracle on ice is going to happen with these extensions!
For example look at the name vacation.rentals
If someone types in vacation.rentals.com it go rentals.com. All they do is create a the sub-domain off the main word rentals. Resulting in confusion and lost traffic including email leakage . Many people will automatically type .com after typing in the main two words. Even if 3-5 % of the traffic is lost it is to much.
Your basically giving traffic to rentals.com for free. That does not mean the site will not do well or be successful for it’s owner it’s just your trying hammer a nail with a screwdriver.
I also have to laugh at .loan extension. If your a bank and your sending out and receiving sensitive info who in the hell would start a company name with a .loan name. For example I have ColoradoLoan.com I think it be horrible for a bank to run a company off of colorado.loan but hey go for it. LOL. Thanks for the extra traffic.
Don
BullS
dot Whatever is DOA
I agree dot USA has lots of potentials.
It adds more credibility if it is managed professionally and with transparency.
John
See my reply about .USA to “domain guy” above, BullS.
Domenclature.com
There is a dot USA, it’s called .Com
Americans are done with discovering domain extensions.
They are now trying to figure a way to send manned missions to Mars.
If you want to do your taxes, you go to H&R Block, if you want domain extension, you secure a .Com.
If you want bleach, you buy Chlorox.
That’s the American view.
John
That’s only “.com only” drum beating and wishful thinking, Domenclature. Almost in the category of trolling really.
Snoopy
Seems anyone who dislike .us is a troll in your world John :)
The .us extension is not good, almost no sales and it has not grown in any meaningful way. It isn’t comparable to real cctlds like .co.uk or .de. It is more like .asia or .pro. Beating a dead horse investing in that.
Jay
All GTLD’s are Dog Shit. And all the people that promoted this scam have no credibility especially those in the Domain Community. I hope Godaddy delists these eyesores one day.
Snoopy
You know all the originals are gtlds, .com, .net, .org, .edu? Everything except cctlds.
Snoopy
Godaddy “shelf space” for new tlds is gradually declining,
Domainnamewire did a story 2 years ago about how when you do a search for “my company” every single alternative suggestion at GoDaddy was a new tld. Registrars were doing everything they could to try and make new tlds work, trying to break their reliance on Verisign.
https://domainnamewire.com/2016/08/30/new-tlds-suffer-awareness-problem-demand-problem/
Do a search for “my company” today and you can see how that shelf space is changing.
.com is still out selling new tlds by 10-15X at godaddy despite Godaddy giving new tlds most of the “shelf space.” (2000-3000 new tlds sold per day versus 30,000 .com’s).
In my view what registrars were/are trying to do is like giving most of your shelf space to RC Cola because you don’t want to be reliant on Coca Cola. You squash the Coke bottles in the corner and hope people buy the alternate product. It makes sense to try for that and it is a one time opportunity but it clearly hasn’t worked out so far. I think registrars have maybe another 5 years to make something of it otherwise they are married to Verisign forever.
It will go back to them having to mainly push .com eventually because you can only push an unpopular product for so long. I think gradually they will realise new tlds are never going to get beyond 10% even if they give it 100% of their marketing.
John McCormac
Some of those NGTs like .TOP are Chinese market dominated. That means that they are highly speculative gTLDs with lower than .COM renewal rates for one year registrations and discounted registration fees. Some of the NGTs have used discounting promotions to increase the number of registered domain names. The problem, as has been seen with .INFO, .BIZ, .XYZ, .NET and all the others, is that discounted registrations have lower renewal rates. There’s a worse aspect for NGTs using discounting. It locks the gTLD into a boom and bust cycle so that it is always chasing the hit from the next round of discounting promotions to keep ahead of the deletions. Some of the NGTs that were dependent on discounting decided to stop discounting. The new registrations almost completely disappeared in the last few months.
The small NGTs are the ones to watch. Some of the geo NGTs have strong renewal rates and they are beginning to follow US/CA/EU/AU/NZ usage. The problem with some of these is that there has been speculation (placename and family names just like the late 1990s in .COM) in some of them that might be OK for a large gTLD like .COM but absolutely toxic for an early stage gTLD. Some of these speculative registrations have washed out of the zones.
The one thing that distinguishes the NGTs with a chance of survival from the others is usage. Unfortunately the NTLDstats’ estimate of usage in gTLDs is not accurate and is giving a highly optimistic view of usage in some NGTs.
Though .XYZ has a history of using discounting to increase the number of domain names in its zone, it has managed to play that numbers game well. However, it is not a .COM killer and is closer in usage/development to .BIZ gTLD. There are some signs of life in the new gTLDs but some need a NASA-like effort to detect them. But it is a quite a varied landscape in terms of usage/development.
The some of the larger NGTs are going to lose registrations throughout 2019 and there’s no demand to replace these losses. Some of this is due to the registries completely underestimating the costs and effort in marketing required to make a new TLD successful. The NGTs form a set of gTLDs serving very different markets. They are not a single TLD in competition with .COM TLD. This year is going to be quite a tough one for some NGTs and some legacy gTLDs.
Jose
You are right in many points of this post.
Now Godaddy is not a good example in statistics since he is the main buyer of gTLD domains known to them.
Goddady resells all purchases domains of any GLTD extension as premium or else do as Amazon on a commission to help other retail companies, in this matter, they are known domainer by Godaddy.
This is from now https://www.godaddy.com/en/domainsearch/find?checkAvail=1&domainToCheck=here
here.one Premium Domain
Get more information *
$ 699.99
$ 699.99 / year when you renew
here.online Premium Domain
Get more information *
$ 349.99
$ 699.99 / year when you renew
* Although we do not have this domain, we can put you in contact with the seller.
These extensions I would give them a name, it was like a plague in a market that only the generic names or TLDs and ccTLDs were the ones to send in this domain market.
This plague devastating fields worked for years by many people like you to be against the gTLD, I can write that more than 90% should not have left because they have not made more than 10000 records.
Although there is another business side to achieve a short domain to 10 years and use the system of trademark driven by the same stakeholders and with $ 250 not having problems for infringing the rules and conditions in the US and at the level of each country.
Happy Day. Jose.
bradley
new gtlds reminds me too much of subdomains in many ways. I wouldn’t invest in it because id feel like someone else really owns it and i can get kicked off it for any reason they come up with.
I agree that .US is undervalued by investors but its use by end users has much potential. slap a http://www.????.us and most people would know its a web address. I don’t agree about .usa being better though.
.us is a location identifier whereas .usa is more of a message, like buy local etc.
steve
It is like Rick is doing all my research for me and my employee. Keep up the good work and I might give you a bonus.
Looks like we can start chopping down the Donut. Google did alot to support these .whatevers but even Google won’t put any more money into them.
Otis Schmakel
.us just needs good promo : Ultimate Solution
Steve B
The sooner these ngtlds go away the better. It was nothing more than profit scheme.
Sergey
Rick,
You kept saying “ngtlds are dead” for a quite long time, maybe 1-2 years already.
OK, we got it. But you keep saying “ngtlds are dead” again and again.
I bet Cato the Elder stopped calling “Carthago delenda est” after Carthage had been destroyed.
So, why do you keep it going, if ngtlds are already dead? Why share new facts, numbers, domain stats? Why so much emotions?
Don’t you think that it looks like you wish them be dead rather than they are in fact dead?
Joe
This reminds one of the many constant new issues of stamps and coins that come out every year and that collectors buy in the billions with no real hope of these made to order collectibles ever appreciating in value. They are true money pits where money goes in never to come back out again except at a big loss. There is always money around for these new issues and collectors keep getting burned, but like in gambling, collectors keep hoping that perhaps these mass produced items will become rare one day. A .com is like a gold and silver coin that you buy and pay according to the full gold and silver content in it. All of the other TLDs are like the new gold and silver pretty looking coins that contains only a small fraction of the gold and silver than what you pay for it which is for the fancy shiny looking design on the coin. Which do you think will retain its value in the long run?
Joe
The only winners with these new TLDs are the companies that are selling these right when they come out. They make their money there and then they continue to sell other TLDs milking them for as long as they can. They continue to offer them as long as there are buyers out there who like to lose their money. In the end these buyers end up holding a worthless empty bag. There is no end of buyers going from one failing TLD into another just like getting burned several times like going from the frying pan into the oven. There is so much money out there for so many people to lose in order to make some people very rich. There are two sides to this equation: winners and losers.