According to nTLDstats.com the number of new gTLD registration broke through the 2 million mark today and sits at 2,011,549.
However there are plenty of caveats and asterisks to go around.
Its interesting to note that there are only 666,394 distinct registrants for the over 2 Million domain names, meaning that the average registrant owns over 3 new gTLD domain names.
cnnic.cn the registry of two IDN gTLD extensions registered and reserved over 55,000 of the 2 million domains just this week. You can read about this here and here.
We already know that there are some 375,000 .XYZ domain names that were given away for free by Network Solutions and that over 70,000 .Berlin domain names were given away for free.
Lets call it 450,000 free domains.
We also know that North Sound Domains which is affiliated with another new gTLD registry, Uniregistry, registered over 43,000 new gTLD domains.
We also know that a company related to the registry that owns .Voting registered 10,200 of just over 10,400 .Voting domain names registered.
There are other registries that have registered small amounts of domain names in its own extension.
So out of the 2 million new gTLD domain registrations we are looking at at least 560,000 free and registry registered domains putting the “real” total, if you’re going to judge the New G’s against extensions like .com, which are all paid and owned registrations, back under 1.5 Million.
Moreover if you look at the top 40 registrants of new gTLD domain names, its not overly encouraging:
At Number one we see North Sound Domains which we chatted about above as being affiliated with a new gTLD registry, Uniregistry.
At number two and three of the top 40 new gTLD registrants there are the registrants of 70,000 free .Berlin Domains.
At number 4 is the office of government of China which registered over 20,000 IDN domains for use inside the country.
Verisign Customer Service is the registrant of 2,500 new gTLD domains.
PUNTO 2012 S.A.P.I. de C.V. another new gTLD registry registered over 2,000 domain
11 of the top 40 or 11 of the remaining top 36 and 5 out of the top 10 new gTLD registrants are only known by a series of question marks, whom seem to be all registrants of IDN new gTLD’s.
Why Registrants are known by just a series of question marks, well that is another question altogether (pun intended) but is not a good sign.
It is getting harder and harder to convince people that there are benefits to registering or switching a new gTLD domain. The registry landgrabs are a major problem because they are killing a lot of development that would happen in a new TLD from people finding a good domain on which they could develop a website or service. A similar dynamic was evident in .EU ccTLD when the TLD was allowed to be overspeculated. Development flatlined and the ccTLD, which was meant to be a competitor to .COM in the EU countries, never recovered. Based on the daily trends, the growth velocity of some of these new gTLDs is slowing and the registries may find it difficult to reverse those trends.
i can’t believe my name is not on the list
No way, Jose. They left you out? 🙂
Seriously though, some of the question marks are for non-English language characters in the WHOIS record and seem to substitutes for Chinese characters.
Where’s your name Mike?
Owen
I was #52 on list a few days ago, today with all the questions marks and IDN registrations..
Today I’m 68 on the list right behind another domainer Ken Lawson.
Mike, would you say your slowing down or speeding up your buying based in this info?
Thanks. Cheers
Neither
I’m still going to try to get highly brandable domains that have reasonable renewal fees