Kassey Lee examines the market for new domains in China.
More than 1,000 new gTLDs (generic top-level domains) were released
five years ago. How are they doing in China? Let’s look at the
best-selling ones as they relate to China.
A bit of personal preference. I don’t like to call them “new gTLDs”
because they are actually no longer new and the term “gTLD” is not easy
to understand. So, I just call them niche extensions because many of
them have specific uses — such as .club, .app, and .news.
When it comes to researching niche extensions, I use Namestat.org.
Its home page provides several categories useful to investors: Top 10,
Top 20, and Top 50. For this article, I’ve picked the Top 10 category
and listed the best-selling extensions below.
| Ranking | Extension | Total Domains | China Only |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | .icu | 4,152,307 | 3,660,320 |
| 2 | .top | 3,348,847 | 895,604 |
| 3 | .xyz | 2,379,173 | 755,200 |
| 4 | .site | 1,727,536 | 456,675 |
| 5 | .vip | 1,302,939 | 381,847 |
| 6 | .online | 1,245,226 | 224,491 |
| 7 | .club | 1,213,987 | 451,678 |
| 8 | .wang (net) | 943,145 | 936,994 |
| 9 | .live | 703,269 | – |
| 10 | .shop | 636,764 | 230,032 |
Note that the “China Only” column indicates domains where country of
registration can be clearly identified. Because domains can be placed in
privacy or their information blocked due to General Data Protection
Regulation (GDPR), their country of registration then cannot be known.
The extreme case happens to .live where the vast majority of .live
domains are under privacy (97%), making it not possible to determine
whether the domains are registered in China or not.
The Top 10 list shows that China is very active in the niche
extensions. One explanation I have read is that many Chinese investors
see themselves as being too late to make it big in the well-established
areas of .com and .cn. They wanted to start in a new investment area and
the niche extensions offered them such opportunity when they were
released a few years ago. Of course, low-price and aggressive promotion
by registries/registrars also help.
In the list, there are several extensions that are well understood in
China. “top”, “vip”, “club”, and “shop” are simple English words that
most Chinese consumers should have no problem understanding their
meanings. For example, “vip” is a popular term that is already
incorporated in many domains such as VIP.com and VIPKids.com. Obviously,
.wang domains are 99% registered in China because it is actually a
Pinyin word meaning “net” and it’s a common name. What really puzzles me
is the .icu extension. The term is supposed to mean “I see you” but I
doubt it is widely understood in China.
Surprisingly, some of the niche extensions in the list have done much
better than established extensions in China. For example, .icu has 3.7
million registrations, which is more than three times the 1.1 million
.net registrations in China. However, none of the niche extensions are
included in the annual “Statistical Report on the Internet Development
in China” by CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center), which
has been tracking domains since 1996. This may suggest their real use in
website development is not significant enough to prompt CNNIC to
include them.
Therefore, if you plan to sell domains in these niche extensions to
China, be prepared that there may not be many corporate buyers ready for
them and most activities may be limited to trading among investors.
Source:domainnamewire.com
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