DOTZON has published its fifth annual ranking of digital city brands. The consulting company uses the term to describe gTLDs delegated to major cities and matching their names. Thirty-six cities in the world currently have a city domain, and some even have more than one, the second name usually being an internationalized domain. For example, Moscow has two domains, .МОСКВА. and .MOSCOW.
For its ranking, DOTZON analyzes city domains based on eight criteria, including the number of registered domains, the number of active websites, the number of websites listed in global rankings, the number of domain names per 1,000 residents, etc. Circle ID reports that, according to the 2021 Digital City Brand study, the German capital’s .BERLIN domain became the most successful city domain for the fifth time. The runners-up are .TOKYO and .NYC. The domains .AMSTERDAM, KOELN, .MIAMI, .HAMBURG, .LONDON, .PARIS and .BRUSSELS round out the top 10. Not only is Berlin’s domain the all-time leader. Notably, there are actually two more German cities, Koeln and Hamburg, among the 10 most successful digital city brands. This fact is hardly a reason to suspect any bias from the ranking developers – although DOTZON itself is a German company.
