5 August, 2015
|
.BRAND REGISTRATIONS |
| 2,050+ 55%+ increase |
Registrations of .brand/closed TLDs have increased significantly since our May report.
NEW .BRANDS IN USE
We have seen some interesting developments recently with Barclays (a British multinational bank) launching home.barclays and now redirecting its primary barclays.com website to it. Below are a few other new examples of .brand utilization:
• http://business.bloomberg
(U.S. financial software, data, and media company)
• http://sports.sky
(British sports media conglomerate)
• http://www.yandex (Russian Internet company)
• http://play.samsung
(South Korean multi-industry conglomerate)
.BRANDS BY INDUSTRY
The most active industries for .brand utilization (with more than two registrations) are currently:
|
# of active .brands |
Industry |
|
11 |
Finance and money |
|
6 |
Internet services |
|
4 |
Retail or marketplace |
|
4 |
Technology |
|
4 |
News, media, and entertainment |
LEFT OF THE DOT
Some of the most commonly used terms to the left of the dot (with three or more references) are:
[nic], [www], [home], [mail], [domaintest], [news], [support], [shop], [foundation], [business], and [about].
Since the representative sample is quite small, we expect the common terms to change over time.
MOST ACTIVE .BRAND REGISTRATIONS
The majority of .brand registrations have been performed primarily in the following TLDs:
|
# of domains |
TLD |
|
555 |
.sca (Swedish consumer goods company) |
|
236 |
.citic/.中信 (Chinese multi-industry conglomerate) |
|
214 |
.bloomberg (U.S. financial software, data, and media company) |
|
208 |
.sky (British sports media conglomerate) |
|
143 |
.nra (U.S. nonprofit organization) |
|
.BRANDS WITH AN ALEXA RANKING |
|
5
No change since our last report. |
|
Alexa Position |
TLD |
|
10,034 |
mabanque.bnpparibas (French bank and financial services company) |
|
116,128 |
mabanquepro.bnpparibas (French bank and financial services company) |
|
348,006 |
study.monash (Australian university) |
|
395,667 |
loja.globo (Brazilian media conglomerate) |
|
609,921 |
mabanqueprivee.bnpparibas (French bank and financial services company) |
|
DOMAIN UTILIZATION |
| 34%
No change since our last report. |
34% of registered .brand domains have properly configured DNS zone files. This suggests that most brands are still in the planning stages.
BEST PRACTICES
We noticed that .brand owners sometimes do not configure the “www” and/or “non-www” versions of their domain name. This has the potential to provide a poor customer experience, lead to cannibalization of direct traffic to search engines, and potentially drive up search marketing costs. For example, play.samsung resolves, but http://www.play.samsung does not resolve. CSC recommends that both versions are always configured.
It is important for .brand owners to understand the brand protection implications in the existing TLD landscape
once they launch their new domain. For example, when launching a .brand domain, organizations should ensure that the proper keyword variations/typos are also protected in .com. These strings will be targeted by third parties and, without proper consumer education, direct traffic may be lost to them. A comprehensive analysis of the impact on search, mobile and social media should also be considered in the TLD launch plan.
.BRANDS IN SEARCH
Proponents of .brand domains have suggested that websites using the domains will provide Google® with signals that
they are authentic, and that this may influence search engine rankings. Google has not confirmed this, but the Brand Advisory Team at CSC Digital Brand Services continues to monitor with interest how .brands are performing in search.
We looked at three of the .brands that already have an Alexa ranking to see which keywords they are ranking for in Google. For this set of domains, non-branded keywords do not appear to be significant drivers of traffic in search.
|
loja.globo Alexa Ranking 395,667 |
Top 3 Keywords at Google.com.br |
||
|
Keyword |
Position |
Monthly Search Volume |
Traffic (%) |
|
globo marcas |
1 |
22,200 |
31.01 |
|
site da globo |
2 |
40,500 |
15.65 |
|
som livre |
10 |
60,500 |
5.39 |
|
study.monash Alexa Ranking 348,006 |
Top 3 Keywords at Google.com.br |
||
|
Keyword |
Position |
Monthly Search Volume |
Traffic (%) |
|
monash scholarships |
1 |
590 |
20.25 |
|
monash scholarship |
1 |
260 |
8.92 |
|
monash university scholarships |
1 |
210 |
7.2 |
|
mabanque.bnpparibas Alexa Ranking 10,034 |
Top 3 Keywords at Google.com.br |
||
|
Keyword |
Position |
Monthly Search Volume |
Traffic (%) |
|
bnp |
7 |
4,090,000 |
47.1 |
|
bnp paribas |
8 |
673,000 |
5.81 |
|
bnp net |
5 |
49,500 |
0.71 |
Source: http://www.SemRush.com
In this section of the report, we will continue sharing observations for the Top 100 New gTLDs by registration volume. Our New gTLD Indicator1, helps gauge the relative value of the New gTLDs and compares them with .com. We are aware that factors such as TLD launch dates will skew the results a bit in the short term and that certain TLDs require special consideration. For instance, it isn’t reasonable to compare Geo-type TLDs, which are targeted for a local audience, to achieve wide-scale penetration of the Alexa top 1M.
Recent Developments
Since our last report, the .bank TLD launched very successfully with over 3,000+ applications. We will continue to monitor that extension to see if it will indeed become synonymous with “trusted banking on the Internet.” We will also be keeping an eye on the upcoming launches of .app (owned by Google), .site and .online which are anticipated to be popular. Will .site outperform .website which has managed to break into CSC’s Alternative Top 10?
Changes in the Top 10
In this period, 9 out of the Alternative Top 10 TLDs remained the same, .work moved down and .wiki was the new entrant. This makes it the third consecutive report that .media has held the #1 position in terms of penetrating the Alexa 1M when taking into account the TLD’s registration volume.
Also since our last report, .wiki showed the greatest increase in its New gTLD Indicator score. As stated above, factors such as TLD launch dates and the pace of registration volume changes will cause oscillations in rankings. For example, .work was number six in the last report, but is now in 20.
Could the CSC New gTLD Indicator signal the future global value of TLDs? Only time will tell, but we are compelled to follow these developments because they may be an indicator of consumer perception and search engine treatment of New gTLDs.
CSC does not necessarily recommend that our clients register in these extensions. We use factors such as industry, search, markets, and brand risk to provide our clients with targeted registration and blocking strategies.
What is the Alexa top 1M?
Alexa.com (an Amazon® company) ranks websites based on their estimated traffic.
The Alexa top 1M is a listing of the million most popular sites on the web based on traffic.2
TOP 10 BY REGISTRATIONS
|
TLD |
# of Domains in Alexa 1M4 |
Registration Volume3 |
New gTLD Indicator1 |
|
.xyz |
359 |
990,514 |
9 |
|
.网址 |
0 |
385,410 |
0 |
|
.science |
215 |
311,471 |
17 |
|
.club |
425 |
270,884 |
38 |
|
.party |
21 |
195,737 |
3 |
|
.wang |
50 |
179,604 |
7 |
|
.berlin |
11 |
152,878 |
2 |
|
.top |
68 |
143,991 |
11 |
|
.link |
192 |
129,854 |
36 |
|
.realtor |
2 |
102,935 |
0 |
AN ALTERNATIVE TOP 10
|
TLD |
# of Domains in Alexa 1M4 |
Registration Volume3 |
New gTLD Indicator1 |
|
.media |
58 |
18,148 |
77 |
|
.today |
121 |
46,711 |
63 |
|
.zone |
31 |
14,779 |
51 |
|
.sexy |
50 |
24,088 |
50 |
|
.social |
27 |
13,889 |
47 |
|
.website |
143 |
74,652 |
46 |
|
.pics |
33 |
17,262 |
46 |
|
.wiki |
23 |
12,592 |
44 |
|
.ninja |
94 |
51,581 |
44 |
|
.space |
58 |
33,542 |
42 |
- New gTLD Indicator: In order to assess a New gTLD’s relative penetration of the Alexa 1M, we developed a simple ratio which compares the # of domains for the TLD in the Alexa 1M with the registration volume for the TLD. We then indexed the ratio against .com (assigned a score of 100), which currently is the most globally utilized TLD.
- Please note that data may be skewed by the fact that website migrations from existing domains may have already ranked for the related keywords, and there may be reporting anomalies from the Alexa.com data set.
- Source: ntldstats.com
- Source: s3.amazonaws.com (Alexa 1M list)
For further information, please contact:
Henry Chan, Corporation Service Company® (CSC®)
henry.chan@cscglobal.com
Ruby Pang, Corporation Service Company® (CSC®)
ruby.pang@cscglobal.com
