Earlier today we published the 1st day results for .Bar and .Rest.
Using ntldstats.com, we had .Bar with 2,464 while other domain blogs had the number just over 1,000.
Well ntldstats.com has now updated again and they are showing a total of 2,836 .Bar domain names registered.
However with the updated today its clear that the biggest registrant of .Bar domain names is the .Bar Registry.
Out of the 2,836 .Bar domain names registered, 1,602 or over 56% were registered by the registry.
The registry can reserve domain names without registering them, but then they won’t resolve.
By registering the domain names they can be activated by the registry.
Of course they have to pay ICANN its per domain fee ($25K Min per year) and their backend provider on a per domain basis.
Removing the domain names registered to the registry there are only about 1,200 .Bar domain names registered which is where the confusion came from earlier today.
What isn’t confusing or in doubt is the number of .Rest domain name registrations which appears to be still at 307 of which 28 were registered by the registry, including Sunrise registrations.
I don’t know where the data is coming from but it’s not the zone files.
Anyone asked Punto 2012 what the actual figures are? They’re the only ones who know for certain.
I agree with Kevin.