Verisign has published research showing that 41% of all domains registered in new gTLDs are parked and feature web banner ads. According to the research, as of June 29, the number of new gTLD domains stood at 1.3 million, which means that around 540,000 of them were parked.
About half of these may be registered in .xyz as part of its rather questionable marketing campaign that automatically registered .xyz domains to .com domains of major companies free of charge. After registration, these domains are automatically parked unless their owners choose otherwise, while many registrants did not even know that they now possessed a .xyz domain or did not want to do anything about it. According to certain estimates, of the 225,000 .xyz domains registered as of June 29, 200,000 were distributed for free as part of the marketing campaign and parked.
Verisign also found that about 10% of new gTLD domains redirect to other domains. As for commercial use, websites that show commercial activity were found at only 3% of domains, according to Verisign.
Andrei Kolesnikov, CEO of the Coordination Center for TLD RU/РФ, had the following to say: “After the new gTLDs are launched, ‘domain investors’ come on stage registering beautiful domain names to be sold afterwards. But owning so many isn't cheap, and most domains get parked to cover expenses and redirect to an advertisement website. A significant part of the parked domains have probably been purchased with a view to future deals.”
