New gTLD Utilization Report by CSC

CSC put out their most recent New gTLD utilization report, the report is published every two months. The report looks to find trends and make observations for corporate clients and digital marketers.

Observations from the report include:

there have been 1,300+ registrations to date which represents a more than 60% increase from the March report. When it was feasible, they analyzed .brand registries with more than two registrations to identify the following findings:

The most active .brand applicants thus far are from the finance and Internet services industries.

The most commonly used terms to the left of the dot (with three or more references) are[nic], [domaintest], [www],[home], [shop], [join], [support] and[about] (TOO many choices imo, the consumer needs to see uniformity)Since the representative sample is quite small, we expect the common terms to change over time.

It is clear that most brands are still in the planning stages as only approximately 34% of the registered domains have properly configured DNS zone files, which can be an indication of utilization. Our belief here is that the pace of registrations has been much quicker than utilization and this gap will begin to close over time.

It looks like CSC as their own methodology, New gTLD Indicator

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

The early leaders In this reporting period, six out of the Top 10 TLDs remained the same (.media,.social,.today,.website,.ninja and .zone) while .works, .pics, .sexy, and .space were the new entrants. This represents the third consecutive report where .social had a top position and the second consecutive report where .media has the number one position in terms of penetrating the Alexa 1M, when taking into account the TLDs’ registration volumes. Since our last report, .pics, .work, .space and .life showed the greatest increase in their New gTLD Indicator scores. As stated above, factors such as TLD launch dates and the pace of registration volume changes will cause oscillations in the New gTLD Read the full article here