Introduction. Welcome to the April edition of Donuts Inc. s exclusive ICANN Board Report.

Transcription

1 New gtld Growth and Analysis April 2015

2 Introduction Welcome to the April edition of Donuts Inc. s exclusive ICANN Board Report. Donuts remains the New gtld Program s most extensive participant, with more than 150 new gtlds currently available, and more being added every month. In this issue, we bring you updated numbers on adoption of new gtlds, a fresh look at the most heavily used issue. We also provide a glance at additional websites using some of our gtlds. and as always, we invite your input and feedback. The Donuts Team info@donuts.co 2 New gtld Growth and Analysis April 2015

3 gtlds By the Numbers Total New Domains Registered: 4,836,066 New gtlds: 578 New gtlds Available to the General Public: 328 Total Donuts gtlds Available to the General Public: 155 New gtlds in Sunrise: 23 Total Donuts gtlds in Sunrise: 8 Data Source: (March 31, 2015) New gtld Growth and Analysis April

4 Top 25 New gtlds by Volume No gtld Total Registered Market Share 1..XYZ 853, % , % 3..CLUB 199, % 4..BERLIN 156, % 5..WANG 136, % 6..REALTOR 95, % 7..GURU 84, % 8..SCIENCE 79, % 9..TOP 68, % 10..LINK 77, % 11..NYC 73, % 12..OVH 60, % 13..LONDON 59, % 14..PHOTOGRAPHY 53, % , % 16..WEBSITE 49, % 17..TODAY 49, % , % 19..ROCKS 43, % 20..COMPANY 41, % 21..PROPERTY 39, % 22..SOLUTIONS 37, % 23..TIPS 37, % , % 25..TOKYO 35, % Data Source: (March 31, 2015) 4 New gtld Growth and Analysis April 2015

5 Usage of new gtlds We continue to carefully analyze Donuts-managed gtlds, including looking at how they re being put to use. In our last report, we highlighted the fact that time has a critical impact on usage numbers content using a domain name. We reported that as of the end of 2014, 22% of our domains contained sites with multi-page dynamic content or redirected to a site with such content. We re pleased to report an increase in that metric. Here s a look at our current statistics, as of February 1, 2015: 24.4% Names with active content or redirection to an existing site with active, multi-page content 23.1% Names with holding pages (e.g., Under Construction ) 37.1% Names with pay-per-click functionality (often a default version of a holding page) 15.4% Do not resolve Is this good or bad? Again, the trend lines are good. Over the past four months: Active content is steadily increasing an annualized 42% rate of growth Pay-per-click (PPC) has fallen by 8% an annualized decline of 24% Donuts gtlds with the highest rate of active content and redirects:.graphics 35.59%.PHOTOGRAPHY 35.53%.FLORIST 32.75%.WORKS 31.68%.MEDIA 30.74%.HOUSE 30.54%.WTF 30.27%.ZONE 28.12%.DATING 26.05% New gtld Growth and Analysis April

6 4% 10% 2% 4% 39% 2% 12% 3% 3% Registrants in Donuts TLDs: Top 10 Countries United States: 39% Germany: 12% United Kingdom: 10% Canada: 4% Australia: 4% France: 3% Netherlands: 3% Switzerland: 2% Spain: 2% Others: 21% Data is as of 3/26/15 and does not include proxy service registrations 6 New gtld Growth and Analysis April 2015

7 Featured Sites We encourage you to go to the Featured Sites page for a deeper look at how registrants are putting Donuts gtlds to work as new and fresh online identities. New gtld Growth and Analysis April

8 Renewal Trends in New gtlds Donuts rolled out last year. As an indicator of overall health of gtlds, we have been keenly interested in how often end-user registrants would renew. phase (that is, following Sunrise). The renewal rate for this set of names was 68.4%. The three largest gtlds in this examined group are.guru,.photography, and.bike individual renewal rates for these gtlds are 63.4%, 75.7% and 74.0%, respectively..guru saw more speculative buying than did other Donuts gtlds; hence, we believe its rate will be below our average. We expect the cumulative rate on all Donuts names to stabilize around 70%, then trend upward toward 80% as the average age of registrations increases and the proportion of names with website content continues to grow. Why do renewal rates matter? Because it s an indicator of the health and overall quality of a gtld. A low or declining renewal rate is a caution alarm, as low rates reduce the long-term value of the domain. For this reason, we ve paid particular attention to the renewal rate for.com and.net names registered in You may have seen it reported that.com has a blended renewal rate of 72% take note, however, that a blended rate includes, and is heavily weighted by, names registered more than a year (and often, many years) ago and are consistently used and renewed every year. Our interest is in the.com and.net names and according to third party analyses, renewal rates for these names is 50% and declining. How is this important? Comparing renewal rates for new and legacy gtlds provides an indicator of the utility of new gtlds. Much has been made, appropriately so, about the attributes of freshness and relevancy of new gtlds, and this is well illustrated by these contrasting numbers. Given the choice between renewing a legacy gtld name registration (perhaps a lengthy or otherwise less-than-desirable name) and a renewing a new gtld registration (more likely a shorter, semantically meaningful name), customers are re-upping their investment in new gtld names. That s a healthy indictor for the program. 8 New gtld Growth and Analysis April 2015

9 Name Collision: The Issue That Never Arrived For years now, ICANN has examined the issue of name collisions the unintentional wise to withhold literally millions of domain names from the marketplace to be sure they could operate cleanly. Much was made of the danger of collision. Proponents of a wait and hold strategy went so far as to suggest human life would be endangered if these names were let loose. ICANN hold until the issue was sorted out. Millions of names were blocked without any evidence of collisions existing. Months later, provided to parties that may have been leaking queries intended for private namespaces to the public DNS. Meanwhile, registries and registrars were unable to sell the most sought after names and had to defend themselves to the public and the press against accusations of hoarding. The increased customer service workload was substantial. The result was that Donuts: Withheld just over 1.2 million domain names across 144 gtlds In 2014, received nearly 40 billion DNS queries (an average of 3.2 billion per month) Since the start of the controlled interruption framework, received reports of only three collisions in total, none of which were life threatening and each of which were quickly mitigated It s regrettable that registrants were deprived of useful and valuable naming options for such an immoderate problem, and doubly unfortunate that the community was scared into believing there was a clear and present danger, even to human life. Donuts will notify registrants who have constructive use for these names that they will begin to become available, in stages, in June. The fact that we observed essentially no operational disruption due to name collisions is good news for the availability of those names, but has another implication as well. Donuts believes, given this evidence, that there are reasonable mitigation paths for the risks begin the work necessary to review those risks and consider such possible mitigations in light of the experience with all the other gtlds, and without making the draconian decision to permanently block their entry into the root. New gtld Growth and Analysis April

10 As an ICANN Board member, you are automatically subscribed to this report, which we hope you ve found useful and informative. We welcome your feedback and input, and encourage you to contact the Donuts team member that provided you the report, or us at Donuts NE 8th Street Suite 350 Bellevue, WA USA Web: Mail: