eNom, Inc., a top 5 ICANN accredited registrar, has been taking “expressions of interest” in new gTLD domain names from consumers since June.
eNom has received over one million submissions worldwide.
The top five new gTLD domain extensions people are most interested in are:
| 1) | .Web | |
| 2) | .Shop | |
| 3) | .Hotel | |
| 4) | .Family | |
| 5) | .Tech |
There are 9 applicants for .Shop, 7 applicants for .Web and .Hotel, 6 for .Tech while .Family only has 3 applicants, Google, Donuts and Frank Schillings Uniregstry.
In addition to tracking registration interest for each of the new domain extensions, the eNom New TLD Watchlist also reports the most popular categories, which are:
| 1) | Services (for example: .Attorney, .Expert, .Law, .Design, .Engineer) | |
| 2) | Identity and Lifestyle (for example: .Family, .Love, .VIP, .Mom, .Health) | |
| 3) | Geographic (for example: .City, .Town, .Place, .Global, .Broadway) | |
| 4) | Shopping (for example: .Sale, .Store, .Buy, .Free, .Shop) | |
| 5) | Technology (for example: .Web, .App, .Tech., .Blog, .Online) |
Additional categories with strong interest also included Novelty (for example: .Wow, .Ninja, .Today, .WTF, .Zone), Business (for example: .LLC, .INC, .Forum, .Company, .Solutions), and Leisure & Recreation (for example: .Dance, .Social, .Hotel, .Games, .Tours).
“The eNom New TLD Watchlist is a key component of our new TLD initiative that allows partners and customers to explore new domain names and register their interest,” continued Sheridan. “We are genuinely excited to see over one million expressions of interest in just five months, and we view this as a strong indicator of demand for new TLDs.”
Additional insights include:
- .Hotel is the most popular new domain extension in South America, Europe and Asia-Pacific.
- In the Sports category, .Yoga was more popular than any other activity, including .Golf, .Rugby and .Football.
- Of the one million submissions, slightly more than half came from people in North America (55%), with Europe (29%) as the second largest group.
- .Pets is the most popular new domain extension in the General Interest category, with .Dog coming in 5th.””
It should be pointed out that it doesn’t cost a consumer anything to place an Expressions of Interest nor does it result in a registration for a domain name without further action and payment by the customer down the road
.Web is the one to watch
Rick, do you think .web will become new .com? Will Fortune500 companies switch from .com to .web?
It’s an interesting question Jay!…
After all, .web is much more intuitive (for the web) than
.com, and at the very least, its implementation will help
to drive down inflated .com prices in the aftermarket.
In my opinion, many of the gTLDs will help to do that, but
the .web TLD really is the ‘killer’ in that regard…
I think is far more important WHO are the interested parties in each particular gTLD…
if it’s domainers/speculators/flippers/”bigger fool than me” ‘players … as with any other extension it becomes the “kiss of death” (even if delayed such as the .co)
“Additional categories with strong interest also included Novelty (for example: .Wow, .Ninja, .Today, .WTF, .Zone)…”
.Ninja? Strong interest? LOL…. yeah, I’ve got some prime swampla…err, real estate in FLA I’ll sell ya too. 😉
…I would have to be brain-dead to want any of the aforementioned “top five”. ALL of these are the cyber version of “beanie babies” marketing and I have confidence that it will prove itself as such down the road…
.Ninja was applied for by Demand Media, Inc. which is the same company that owns enom.com
I don’t see why .web should do any better than .biz has. Companies regularly pay 5 figures for a .com domain when the .biz is available for ten bucks, even though both extensions mean the same thing and are the same length.
I think the only extensions that will detract from .com aftermarket sales are those that are short and distinctively different from .com (i.e. .law). And even that may not stop the value of .coms from rising.
I am rooting for .web and would definitely register some good keywords if I could.
.LESS is the one that is the real winner! People are truly interested in what .LESS has to offer other than it is a great proposed TLD extension. See more info about it at AdvertisingStandards*org and or my LinkedIn profile – Aaron Pace
Aaron,
I have read your website, and think it’s a hopeless idea.
Offering web surfers “less” of what they don’t want/need?!
Also, you say that this is the “biggest invention since the
invention of the internet”, and I admire the passion behind
such a comment, but the idea itself is so misguided that it
just beggers belief.
ri.sk wrote:
> After all, .web is much more intuitive (for the web) than .com
There’s a chance that this might be true if .WEB was available as an alternative to .COM from the very beginning. But something new will never be more “intuitive” than something that’s been around for over a decade, and that people have grown used to hearing about and using every single day since then.
It isn’t the name. It’s what people get used to. That’s the problem with all of the upcoming gTLDs. People aren’t used to them. I know people who don’t even know what .CO is, even after all its marketing and Superbowl advertising.
Amazon.com is a good example. Wouldn’t generic terms like “Books.com” or “Shop.com” been way more intuitive as a brand for an online store? But people have grown so used to the name “Amazon,” that they now equate the word to “shopping.” One can’t imagine that Amazon would now change their name to anything more “intuitive,” and they’d be fools to even think about doing so. Even though the word “Amazon” has absolutely nothing to do with shopping, and more to do with a mythological tribe of women warriors.
As an aside, many people prefer to use the term “Internet” over the word “Web.” And yet .NET never got the same amount of traction as .COM got. (And given its track record, it’s guaranteed that won’t be changing.)
You make a good point Grim, particularly your comment about .net.
The most important question of all, however, is one that is currently
shrouded in mystery and is one that will never be asked by “domainers”,
or indeed anyone else who has a vested interest in market-making and
keeping .com as No.1…
The question is simply this:
Do site visitors really care whether a site uses .com or not?
We will only know the real answer to that question next year, after the
flood of new gTLDs have entered the market, and if it turns out that they
don’t care (and instead want to associate with a site name that they feel
reflects the site in a more potent way), then the long-held idea about
“.com trust/credibility” will have been exposed as meaningless and false.
ri.sk wrote:
> Do site visitors really care whether a site uses .com or not?
If the site has great content, it won’t matter at all. The problem is, great content takes a lot of time, and is difficult to create. Anyone starting from scratch today, even with a .COM, will potentially have hundreds or thousands of established sites (worth visiting) in its genre that it will be competing against. Contrary to what is being said, that there aren’t enough names to go around… well what’s the point, really? If this was the ’90s or early ’00s it would be different, but you’d have to be one of the very lucky and hard-working 10,000th of a percent to even make a dent in market share today. Unless you have a totally unique idea and plenty of funding, of course. Which would make you even more rare.
For the record, I’ve never sold, or tried to sell a domain, so I have no horse in the .COM market. All of my domains were registered for the express purpose of creating websites. I started in 1996. I wouldn’t want to be starting today. And as a software developer since the early ’80s, and now an app developer, I wouldn’t want to just be getting my start in the app field today, either. Anyone could make a nice amount of money with the dumbest app, 3 years ago. But time moves fast and changes everything. Now you actually have to create an app that stands out and is actually great. All for a chance at making someone part with their hard-earned 99 cents.
In any event, I’m not so much against the gTLDs as far as “names” are concerned… just the timing. Do we really need millions more websites, most of which will have below-average content or be parked? I hardly have time to visit the sites I visit now, and I know I’m not alone. Most people have a very select group of sites they visit, and they spend the majority of their time there. The majority of other sites that get visitors of any substance might be discovered after searching Google, but for the most part, they get their traffic from people who never come back. Usually because there’s nothing really worth coming back to.
The gold rush is long over. But you’ll probably do okay selling picks and shovels to those who don’t believe that.