United Domains has 1 million new gTLD pre-regs
United Domains announced today that its new gTLD pre-registration program has racked up its millionth domain.
The registrar has been accepting no-commitment pre-regs since mid-2011, and currently lets customers express interest in over 120 not-yet-approved gTLDs.
The most popular is .web, with over 123,000 expressions of interest to date.
Customers are not of course guaranteed anything in return for handing over their email addresses, but for registrars and registries such programs are a useful way to measure (and drum up) interest.
Some say such programs do little more than sow confusion among registrants, however.
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I don’t see the phrase ‘express your interest’ anywhere on the united domains site.
I do see the words ‘pre-register’ quite frequently though, along with several references to ‘secure your domain’.
highly misleading
One simple change is all it would take.
Change ‘pre-register’ to ‘watchlist’ everywhere on their site.
But they won’t do that, because it doesn’t convert as well. Pays more to let people believe something that is not correct.
The result is consumer confusion on a large scale.