Radix produced an infographic based on an ICANN survey to analyze how their new strings are doing with consumers.
Some of the ICANN results:
- 52% of surveyed consumers were aware of at least 1 new gTLD presented to them
- 7 out of 10 of new-gTLD-aware consumers had visited a site on a new gTLD
- Volume vs. Consumer mindshare: TLDs that top the charts in terms of domain volumes don’t necessarily own equal amount of consumer mind share
- Time in Market does not impact Consumer Awareness: The amount of time that a TLD has been live for is not proportional to the customer awareness for the extension
Radix delved deeper into how .online and .website fared with consumers.
this was an icann survey, not a radix survey
Corrected thanks Andrew, ICANN got removed when changing drafts.
.online – too long, too *banal*, too expensive
.website – totally “blows”
.site – too expensive, too banal, would be okay but certainly not great if cheaper to renew
Conclusion:
.Web as a new arrival eclipses and blows them all away, the ones above, that is. .Com still rules. .Net still good. A small number of the best of the best new ones are also great and much better than the ones above.
This ICANN research is completely flawed. What we realized with the local results for our country is that people answered about the word after the dot, not the “dot something”. So asked about “.news”, the answer was about “news”… I can’t blame a registry for using such a result in their benefit, but I hope people don’t get too excited about these numbers and when they doesn’t measure reality correctly.
The ICANN stuff doesn’t even seem to have enough of a sample size or random selection process to even be considered research. It is pure marketing fluff. It may give the ICANN people a warm fuzzy feeling but it is utterly useless to registrars, hosters, registrants, domainers and end-users. I don’t think that ICANN really ever understood what it should have been measuring or how to measure it.
Europe is a very big market and has at least 27 or so ccTLDs including the two largest ccTLDs in the world (.DE and .UK) and even the .EU ccTLD with about 3.8 million registrations. The new gTLDs are not market leaders and most people in Europe would be unaware of the new gTLDs.
There must be some long term adopters for the new GTLD’s. I didn’t like them at first, but my friends new business launched on a .guru – it really suits this funky extension – I realize not everyone feels the same way!