First live dot-brand switches back to .com
CITIC Group, which became the first company to dump .com for its new dot-brand gTLD, has switched back to .com.
CITIC, a massive Chinese conglomerate, switched from citic.com to limited.citic in September, but a DI commenter noticed that it’s now back to using citic.com.
Google searches for “citic” were returning the new gTLD as the top hit for the Citic Limited, now it’s back to citic.com.
The domain limited.citic is not currently resolving to a web site for me.
Other brands are still actively using their dot-brand gTLDs, but Citic was the only one I’m aware of that decided to replace its .com.
First company abandons .com for new dot-brand gTLD
Wow. Somebody actually did it.
CITIC, China’s biggest conglomerate, has started redirecting its established .com domain to its new dot-brand gTLD, .citic.
Specifically, it’s redirecting citic.com (go on, click it!) to limited.citic.
Almost everyone reading this post will agree that as a memorable, attractive domain it’s a step backwards.
But CITIC does seem to be the first dot-brand to make the leap from .com to dot-brand with both feet, and it seems to have done so with little to no penalty to its Google ranking (at least as far as searches for its company name go).
A Google search for “citic” here returns limited.citic as the third result, behind Wikipedia and one of CITIC’s sister companies.
The original citic.com doesn’t appear in the top results.
The company also has ranking for group.citic, one of the five second-level names active in the .citic zone file right now.
It’s not the first dot-brand to launch a web site at its new gTLD — destination.monash and annualreport.axa spring to mind — but it does seem to be the first to throw away its .com completely.
CITIC does not appear to have activated its matching Chinese-script gTLD, .中信, in the same way, however. Only nic.中信 appears in search results for sites under that TLD.
Thanks to Jothan Frakes of NamesCon for the tip.
Second dot-brand gets ICANN contract
CITIC Group has signed a new gTLD Registry Agreement with ICANN, the second dot-brand to do so.
The Chinese financial services giant signed on the dotted line for .中信, the Chinese-script version of its company name.
The company has also applied for .citic, but that application is a little further down ICANN’s processing queue.
A little over two weeks ago, Samsung became the first dot-brand to enter into an ICANN registry contract.
CITIC becomes the 58th new gTLD with a contract, though 613 have been invited to contracting.
UPDATE: Oops! Thanks to the reader who alerted me to the fact that .中信 is actually the third dot-brand with a contract. The gTLD .otsuka (which is a Japanese pharmaceuticals company and not, as I thought, a geographic region) was in fact the second. I regret the error.
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