Domain Incite editor Kevin Murphy has published the results of personal research that may point to declining interest in new gTLDs on the part of investors and individual registrants. Murphy has analyzed 334 gTLDs that had a general availability date before March 14, 2015, which allows for an evaluation of the dynamics because 445 days is enough time for a gTLD to go through its first renewal/deletion cycle. He also disregarded dot-brands in general, where only the registry can own names.
Murphy concluded that 96 of the gTLDs he analyzed were smaller on June 1 than they were 30 days earlier, 104 were smaller than they were 90 days earlier, and 76 were smaller than they were 366 days earlier. Murphy also identified a fourth group of domains that were smaller on a monthly, quarterly and annual basis, which strongly points to a trend. There were 35 such gTLDs, or over 10 percent of the total number of the domains he surveyed.
Nearly half of the 35 domains belong to Donuts, which was the most aggressive early mover. One of these is .GURU, once a most popular gTLD. A Donuts spokesperson reacted quickly by saying that its overall number of registrations is on the increase and that “too much focus on individual TLDs doesn’t accurately indicate the overall health of the TLD program in general.”
