Nielsen published the results of a study it conducts every year by order of ICANN. 3349 domain name administrators from 24 countries of the world took part in it. Probably, the most interesting result is that the number of respondents that are aware of the “classical” domains’ existence (.COM, .NET and .ORG) is a little bit lower compared to last year, reports Domain Incite. For example, 69% of the respondents said they were aware of .NET’s existence, 69% have heard of .ORG before (the numbers were 76 and 70 percent respectively a year ago). Awareness of .COM fell as well but only by 1% from 86 to 85. And even though this difference could be a statistical error or a technical one when filling out the form, David Dickinson, project lead for Nielson on this study, draws the attention to the fact that awareness of .COM among younger respondents was lower.
Other results indicate that the new domains have taken their place in the minds of users. They are so confident that are willing to believe in the existence of domains that are actually not there. For instance, 26% of respondents from Africa said they were aware of the .CAIRO domain, 17 percent of North Americans know .TORONTO, and 21 percent in South America are aware of .BOGOTA. These names were added to the survey as a trick – these domains don’t actually exist in reality. At the same time only 13 percent of respondents were aware of the existence of .XYZ domain, which not only exists but is the most successful among all new gTLDs. This indicates that domain administrators associate new gTLDs with more meaningful names rather than a random combination of letters.
In general, David Dickinson urged not to look at specific numbers but rather at tendencies, which are clear from the survey results. First and the most important one is that the launch of the new domains had a positive impact on customers’ attitudes towards the domain industry and hasn’t caused any negative effects, which many feared. Second tendency is that new gTLDs have found their place and users in the domain space but are not ready – and in the foreseeable future are unlikely to be ready – to be serious competitors to the old ones.
