Forget Dot Com, 2019 Will Finally be the Year of Weird Domain Names (wired.co.uk)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Latest registration figures released by Verisign, an internet network company that oversees some domain name endings, seem to indicate that after a rocky few years, new gTLDs may finally be finding their niche in the marketplace. 2019 could be the year of the obscure domain name. Registrations for new gTLDs rose by nearly 11 per cent in the last year, compared to an average 3.5 per cent increase across the entire domain landscape, according to Verisign. One in five domain name registrations in the last year were on new gTLDs.

"The numbers are picking up as well as the usage," says Thomas Keller of 1&1 IONOS, a German web hosting company. In part that's down to saturation in more traditional domain name endings like dot-com, and country code TLDs (such as .uk, .tk and .cn). It's difficult to get good, precise and short dot-com domain names now, but hyper-specific and new gTLDs still have plenty of choice. Around ten per cent of new URLs registered through 1&1 IONOS were for new gTLds, Keller says.

Comments

Re:I think the new gTDLs are dumb.

[techno-vampire]

Blame the registrars and the clueless computer users for the shortage of .com domains. I have a pair of friends, nice people but completely clueless when it comes to computers. When their daughter was borne, they bought a domain with her name so that they could put up a website about their infant daughter. Not only that, they bought DAUGHTER'SNAME.com, even though it had nothing to do with a business simply because they thought that all websites in the US ended in .com and the registrar let them. The request should have been refused because it's an improper use of the TLD, and they should have had to pick either .org or .us, with the latter being the best choice. If people weren't allowed to have .com domains unless they were for commercial use, there'd be a lot more of them available.