“We’re Irish!” claim Brits as .eu shrinks yet again

British companies are moving their .eu domain names to their Irish branches in an effort to keep them after Brexit, according to the speculations of EURid.

.eu regs in Ireland grew 18% to 47,781 in the second quarter, according to the registry’s Q2 roundup. EURid said:

The high increase in Ireland could be related to the notice about UK withdrawal from the EU and its subsequence to UK .eu domain name holders. Some of the UK domain name holders may have had the chance to transfer the domain names to their branches in other countries of the EU and EEA, e.g. the neighboring Ireland.

Regs in the UK dropped by 13.9% compared to Q1 and by almost half — 46.7% — year over year. There are now 162,287 UK-based .eu domains.

Overall, .eu is still shrinking, partly as a result of this Brexit impact, which has been felt ever since the 2016 referendum.

There were 3,602,573 registered domains at the end of June, down from 3,661,899 at the end of March.

UK-based registrants have been told that they cannot continue to own .eu domains after Brexit, currently slated for October 31. It’s still a possibility that the date could change, or that Brexit may not happen at all.

Confusing matters, EU citizens living in the UK will still be eligible for .eu domains.

All this data, plus a whole lot more, can be read in the EURid Q2 report (pdf).

2 Comments Tagged: .eu, brexit, eurid

Mystery .vu registry revealed

Neustar has been selected as the back-end domain registry operator for the nation of Vanuatu.

The company, and the Telecommunications Radiocommunications and Broadcasting Regulator, announced the appointment, which came after a competitive tender process between nine competing back-end providers, last night.

The ccTLD is .vu.

It’s unrestricted, with no local presence requirements, and currently costs $50 per year if you buy directly from the registry, Telecom Vanuatu Ltd (TVL).

Unusually, if you show up at TVL’s office in Vanuatu capital Port Vila, you can buy a domain for cash. I’ve never heard of that kind of “retail” domain name option before.

A handful of international registrars also sell the domains marked up, generally to over the $80 mark.

TVL was originally the sponsor of the ccTLD, but ICANN redelegated it to TRBR in March after Vanuatu’s government passed a law in 2016 calling for redelegation.

Under the deal, Neustar will take over the registry function from TVL after its 24 years in charge, bringing the .vu option to hundreds of other registrars.

Most registrars are already plugged in to Neustar, due to its operation of .us, .biz and .co. It also recently took over India’s .in.

There’s no public data on the number of domains under management, but Vanuatu is likely to have a much smaller footprint that Neustar’s main ccTLD clients.

It’s quite a young country, gaining independence from France and the UK in 1980, a Pacific archipelago of roughly 272,000 people.

Neustar expects the transition to its back-end to be completed September 30.

2 Comments Tagged: .vu, back-end, iana, ICANN, migration, neustar, redelegation, telecom vanuatu, transition, TRBR, vanuatu

Berkens says new gTLDs mostly suck but geos suck hardest

Ever since he cashed out his massive portfolio of domain names in a bulk sale to GoDaddy three and a half years ago, domain investor Mike Berkens has been dabbling in new gTLDs, and so far he’s not impressed.

In a recent conference speech and blog post, he revealed some of his experiences parking and trying to sell his new g names, and he has come down particularly harshly on geographic TLDs.

City TLDs such as .london, .nyc and .miami are “death” to a domain investor, he said at a domainer meetup in Asheville, North Carolina last week.

His portfolio of 29 .miami names has had just 532 type-in visits in the last year, and have not received a single offer, he wrote on TheDomains.com.

On the flip-side, Berkens told his audience that domain combinations that naturally fit together, such as online.dating, atlantic.city, moving.company and bank.loans are profitable from type-in traffic and can get thousands of visitors a year.

They can be profitable even when the registry charges a premium renewal fee, he said. The domain obama.care makes him $500 a year parked and has a $150 annual renewal, he said.

But when asked directly whether he would recommend new gTLDs to domain investors, Berkens said he would not, citing among other things the added risk of unregulated price increases in the new gTLD space.

Berkens made eight figures selling his portfolio of 70,000 names to GoDaddy in 2015, but the deal apparently did not include the new gTLD names he’d picked up along the way.

You can watch his 24-minute talk here.

6 Comments Tagged: domainers, geographic, godaddy, miami, new gTLDs

.gay gets rooted

The new gTLD .gay, which was often used as an example of a controversial TLD that could be blocked from the DNS, has finally made it to the DNS.

While no .gay domains are currently resolving, the TLD itself was added to the root zone over the weekend.

Its registry is Top Level Design, which currently also runs .design, .ink and .wiki.

The company won the string in February, after an auction with three other applicants.

While Top Level Design had planned to launch .gay this October on National Coming Out Day in the US, but had to postpone the release so as not to rush things.

It’s now eyeing a second-quarter 2020 launch, possibly timed to coincide with a major Pride event.

The registry is currently hiring marketing staff to assist in the launch.

It’s the first new TLD to hit the internet since February, when South Sudan acquired .ss.

But it’s been over a year since the last 2012-round new gTLD appeared, when .inc was delegated in July 2018.

There are currently 1,528 TLDs in the root. That’s actually down a bit compared to a year ago, due to the removal of several delegated dot-brands.

.gay was, prior to 2012, often used as an example of a string that could have been blocked by governments or others on “morality and public order” grounds.

But that never transpired. The protracted time it’s taken to get .gay into the root has been more a result of seemingly endless procedural reviews of ICANN decision-making.

Comment Tagged: .gay, delegation, iana, ICANN, root, top level design

Neustar takes control of two new gTLDs

Neustar has started taking over former dot-brand new gTLDs belonging to its former clients.

It recently took control of .compare and .select, which previously belonged to Australian insurance company iSelect.

Neustar had been the back-end registry provider for both TLDs.

As previously blogged, iSelect abandoned its primary dot-brand, .iselect, in June.

That was despite that fact that it was actually in use, with domains such as home.iselect, news.iselect and careers.iselect all resolving to web sites.

Now, the generic dot-brands .compare and .select have been assigned to the blandly named Registry Services LLC, a new Neustar subsidiary.

They’re not the first examples of dictionary words functioning as dot-brands being repurposed as generics.

Notably, XYZ.com took over .monster from Monster.com and ShortDot bought .bond from Bond University.

Neustar has not yet announced its plans for its two new acquisitions.

4 Comments Tagged: .compare, .select, acquisition, assignment, ICANN, iselect, neustar, new gTLDs