Latest news of the domain name industry

Recent Posts

.top gTLD tops a million as China goes domain nuts

Kevin Murphy, January 17, 2016, 11:47:01 (UTC), Domain Registries

China-based new gTLD .top has become only the second new gTLD to pass the one-million-domain milestone.
The gTLD, managed by Jiangsu Bangning Science & Technology Co, had 1,000,469 domains in its zone file on Saturday, an increase of 5,808 on the day.
The zone has grown by 453,833 domains in the last 90 days, according to DI PRO stats.
It’s growing just slightly faster, in percentage terms, than new gTLD volume leader XYZ.com’s .xyz.
The rapid growth can no doubt be attributed largely to price, feeding the current Chinese appetite for domain investment.
Its most successful registrar, West.cn (Chengdu West Dimension Digital Technology Co), is currently selling .top names prominently for CNY 4 for the first year. That’s just $0.60.
The registry says that registrants come from 231 countries and regions. On its web site, it highlights France’s Gandi.net and Gibraltar’s budget registrar AlpNames as key international partners.
However, the latest registry reports show that over 90% of its sales are coming from China-based registrars.
Despite .top being a Latin-script TLD, European and North America registrars seem to account for a very small number of registrations.
It’s not even carried by the likes of GoDaddy and eNom.
The third-place 2012-round new gTLD is currently .wang, another Chinese registry, which yesterday had 628,125 names in its zone file.
Number four is .win, which despite being run by Gilbraltar-based Famous Four Media is utterly dominated by sales via Chinese registrars.
At number five is .club, with 552,065 names and a much more international distribution of registrars.

Tagged: , , , , ,

Comments (10)

  1. kingof.top says:
    January 17, 2016 at 3:49 pm

    This ‘first million step’ was just a question of time – like the second / third / … will be.
    It was the expected result of this gTLD’s name itself.
    I believe .top will spread heavily worldwide.
    Referring to the this article I think that sooner or later also GoDaddy and eNom will add .top to their range of new gTLDs – also just a matter of time.

    Reply
  2. Dan says:
    January 18, 2016 at 4:51 pm

    The lack of take up by western registars may be in part due to registry tactic of spamming end users and registrars.
    Its not an appealing registry when they spam your customers and staff on all communication channels…

    Reply
  3. Surya says:
    January 18, 2016 at 11:38 pm

    In the 2016 there will be only 14 TLDs legal in China including .top and .wang. Only domains registered before the full running of regulation are permitted to register by citizen so from March 2015 they crazily collect other good name from TLDs not legal including .com and .cc. But it seem that the government will force the regulation soon as they have bought 21000 new domains in pin yin

    Reply
  4. Joseph Peterson says:
    January 19, 2016 at 1:19 am

    I’ve got to hand it to .TOP. They push hard.
    Around the time .TOP launched, I must have been contacted by a dozen different registry sales reps urging me to buy or promote .TOP. All the other nTLD registries put together wouldn’t come close to this level of zeal.
    Certainly, giving away domains at near-free prices explains a large part of their numbers. But they also seem to know their own Chinese market pretty well, and they know how to hustle.

    Reply
    • Zhang YaChuan says:
      January 22, 2016 at 8:06 am

      I know that story. The registry clarified that the “registry sales reps” are actually from a reseller, who might have thought calling themselves as registry team would give them more credibility, but on the contrary, it didn’t and pissed off the registry. They were reported and had their registrar seriously warned by the registry. This is known in Chinese domain circle. I bet you didn’t get such soliciting since May last year.

      Reply

Add Your Comment