Registrations among new gTLDs aren’t in freefall, but numbers continue to drop as registrations come up for renewal and, for some, following heavily discounted promotions, registrants aren’t renewing.
Registrations were 26,770,640 across the 1,226 new gTLDs to have been delegated by ICANN as of 25 July according to nTLDstats.com, the lowest they’ve been since 28 November last year when there were 26,692,986 registrations. In the intervening period registrations have had some ups and downs, but they peaked at 29,431,088 on 14 April and it’s mostly been a downhill slide since.
A large part of the decline has been .xyz, which peaked at 6,756,335 on 6 December and today after a couple of huge drops are now at 5,606,348. By today I mean registrations at the close of 25 July. .top is another to have dropped noticeably, having peaked at 4,786,757 and today registrations sit at 3,545,386. Together these 2 new generic top level domains account for just over a third (34.18) of all new gTLD registrations. Both of these new gTLDs also have huge numbers of domains listed as “upcoming deletes” – 2,084,750 and 385,734 for .xyz and .top respectively.
Of the top 10 by registration numbers today, another to have seen registrations drop dramatically is .win which peaked at 1,297,360 and today registrations stand at 1,036,413, .wang which peaked at 1,120,100 on 2 March and today stand at 657,545, .site which peaked at 729,188 and now stands at 531,959 and .bid which peaked at 619,902 on 13 January and today sits at 469,595.
It’s been a rough and tumble time as discounted promotions end. Quite a few of those, if not all, that have seen significant declines, have a large presence in China. But in total, the proportion of registrants to Chinese registrants, largely domain investors, has risen. On 28 November last year there were 7,314,451 new gTLD domain names registered to Chinese registrants, increasing to 12,553,212 today. Currently 46.89% of all registrations are to Chinese registrants. Another 23.06% (6,174,648) use Whois proxy services, which means most likely over half of all new gTLD registrations are Chinese.
One new gTLD that has largely defied drops has been .club. One reason for .club not suffering the drops like others in the top 10 is they’ve not had any discounted promotions. Registrations have grown gradually to 1,094,972
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