Latest news of the domain name industry

Recent Posts

What happens in Vegas… gets released in .vegas

Kevin Murphy, June 27, 2019, Domain Registries

Dot Vegas is releasing 2,266 previously reserved .vegas domain names, most of which accord to a decidedly sleazy theme.
Based on my eyeball scan of the list, I’d say easily half of the names being released are related to pornography, prostitution, gambling, drugs, and venereal diseases.
A large number are also family-friendly terms related to travel, tourism and general commercial services.
On the release list are domains including taxi.vegas, rentals.vegas, motels.vegas, lucky.vegas and magic.vegas,
Registrars may be interested to know that domains such as register.vegas, name.vegas and names.vegas are also on the list.
Undisclosed premium prices will be charged for 283 of the names, with the rest hitting the market at the regular .vegas price, which at the top two registrars (GoDaddy and 101domain, each with about 38% market share) is about $70-$80 retail for renewals.
The registry said that the release is happening as part of “an ongoing effort to increase awareness and usage of .vegas domain names”.
.vegas has yet to top 22,000 domains under management and has been on the decline, volume-wise, since last July.
Because they’ve never been available before, the new domains will have to run through the ICANN-mandated Trademark Claims period first, enabling trademark owners to snap up their brand-matches first.
I did spot a few obvious brands — such as Playboy and ChatRoulette — on the list.
Dot Vegas expects this claims period to run from August 1, with the general availability November 1.
The X-rated part of list is actually surprising educational. I thought I knew all the words, but apparently not. Without leaving the T’s, who knew “tribbing”, “teabagging” and “thai beads” were things?
I feel so naive.

Short .vegas domains go on sale

Kevin Murphy, July 24, 2017, Domain Registries

Dot Vegas has made one and two-character .vegas domain names available to register on a first-come, first-served basis.
Single-character domains such as a.vegas and 7.vegas and two-character names such as 77.vegas and bj.vegas all appear to be available, including domains that match country-code TLDs.
Prices seem to be around the $2,750 to $3,299 mark for the one-character names at the three registrars Dot Vegas plugged in its announcement.
For the two-character names, you’re looking at $550 to $699, again depending on registrar.
Renewal fees for these short names seem to be about double what you’d expect to pay per year for a regular .vegas name, starting at over $100 per year.
Of the three promoted registrars — GoDaddy, Uniregistry and NameCheap — Uniregistry appears to be the cheapest and GoDaddy the most expensive.
The .vegas gTLD has been on the market for about three years and has about 16,000 domains in its zone file currently.

Dot Vegas sells $2m of premiums

Kevin Murphy, January 28, 2015, Domain Sales

New gTLD registry operator Dot Vegas says it has sold over $2 million worth of “premium” .vegas domain names to date.
The registry, which went to general availability in September, has also registered 1,000 additional premiums to itself in an effort to drum up more sales.
The list is available at the registry’s web site (pdf).
As you might expect, gambling and tourism related keywords feature heavily, but there are also names geared towards locals.
The names don’t appear to have buy-now prices. Rather, Dot Vegas is soliciting interested potential buyers via the reserved sites.
.vegas zone files show just over 12,000 names currently. That number will include the registry-reserved ones. According to DomainTools, Dot Vegas owns about 2,200 names across all TLDs.

.vegas beats all six new M+M gTLDs combined

Kevin Murphy, September 16, 2014, Domain Registries

Minds + Machines’ first day of general availability for its first six wholly owned new gTLDs has produced some very disappointing numbers.
The company managed to net just 1,694 new domains across .country, .cooking, .vodka, .rodeo, .horse and .fishing combined yesterday, according to this morning’s zone files.
It has fewer than 2,000 names across all six zones.
Meanwhile, .vegas, which also went to GA yesterday, managed to net 2,933 new domains, ending the day at 3,903.
Here’s a table of M+M’s performance over its first seven or eight hours of GA, which began at 1600 UTC yesterday.
[table id=31 /]
Assuming the zone files are fresh, it’s a poor first day for the company whichever way you look at it, especially given that M+M has been accepting pre-registrations in its TLDs since November 2013.
As well as being vertically integrated, M+M has about 80 third-party registrars on board to sell its names, including the largest.
Afilias’ .organic, which also went to GA yesterday, shows just one new registration today.
However, this can be attributed to the fact that registrants need to submit credentials for manual verification before their new domains are allowed to go live in the zone file.

Yeehaw! Bumper crop of new gTLD launches

Kevin Murphy, September 15, 2014, Domain Registries

There’s a definite wild west flavor to today’s crop of new gTLD launches, in a week which sees no fewer than 16 strings hit general availability.
Kicking off the week, today Minds + Machines brings its first wholly-owned TLDs to market.
Following the successful launch of .london, for which M+M acts as the back-end, last week, today we see the launch of the less exciting .cooking, .country, .fishing, .horse, .rodeo, and .vodka.
Afilias’ rural-themed .organic also goes to GA today.
As does .vegas, an oddity in the geo-gTLD space as it’s a city pretty much synonymous with one vertical market, gambling. Or three vertical markets, if you include booze and prostitution.
.vegas names do not require a local presence, so I’m expecting to see gambling businesses the world over attempt to capitalize on the Vegas brand regardless of their location.
A second batch of launches is due on Wednesday September 17.
Sticking with the wild west theme, RightSide’s .republican is due to go first-come, first-served.
With a somewhat more eastern flavor, Radix Registry’s first new gTLDs — .website, .press and .host — all hit GA on the same day.
Donuts’ .loans, .life, .guide and .church all enter their standard-pricing phases, while .place and .direct enter their premium-priced Early Access Period on Wednesday too.