An article that analyzes the state of affairs in the new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) was published on the official blog of CZ.NIC, the registry of Czech Republic’s ccTLD. The situation is alarming: for the first time since the New gTLD Programme was launched the number of registered names in the new gTLDs decreased. Naturally, the Programme itself is only four years old, this is why it’s probably too soon to make any global conclusions. Nevertheless, the tendency is troubling, especially if we consider the scale of the fall. As of the end of 2017, there were almost 4 million registered names less than a year ago – 23,823,948 against 27,719,468.
Domain .XYZ that lost over 60% of its names is the main contributor to the decline. It seems that the reason for this drop was that the registry gave away names for free or charged very low fees for them (about $0.15). This led to a situation when many registrants acquired domain names that they didn’t need or didn’t know what to do with them. As a result, the majority of such registrations were simply not renewed. This version is confirmed by the fact that almost 56% of all names registered in new domain zones have no DNS records, which means that they are not being used. Other new gTLDs that showed a serious decrease in numbers were .TOP (minus 2,486,830 registrations), .WANG (minus 357,136), .WIN (minus 224,173) and .BID (minus 138,558).
However, there is some positive news as well. Some new domains demonstrated significant growth in 2017. Primarily, .LOAN domain – it increased by 431,834 registrations in a year, and in the beginning of 2018 became the leader by the number of registered names in the new domains having bypassed .XYZ. Domains .SHOP (+402,797 registrations), .CLUB (+298,238) and .ONLINE (+205,001) also demonstrated positive dynamics. Nevertheless, the general situation is not very optimistic for now: out of 1224 new gTLDs only 15% can boast that they have over 10 thousand registered names.
