74% of fresh TLD registrations (SLD+TLD) not registered in .com

Interesting data regarding what domains are being registered in fresh top level domain names.

Early this year, as fresh top level domain names started to be released, I noticed something interesting while reviewing which fresh TLDs were being registered: most of them were available in .com.

I noticed that the second level domain (SLD) plus Top Level Domain (TLD) combination was usually available as SLDtld.com. For example, Something.Guru was available as SomethingGuru.com.

Verisign just published data confirming my initial observation, with a much larger data set. As stated by the firm, 74% of fresh TLD registrations are available as SLDtld.com.

This might not be surprising when you look at specific examples. A lot of sld.tld registrations don’t make much sense as a continuous string. Rather than looking at it as a continuous string, the TLD is merely a category for the topic of the SLD. A lot of fresh TLDs also read “backward” and wouldn’t make much sense as SLD+TLD.com. Examples include .best, .top and .cheap.

Another reason this number is so high is since brands will register their trademarks in all top level domain names, even those that have nothing to do with their products. For example, TD Ameritrade registered TDAmeritrade.bike but doesn’t have TDAmeritradeBike.com (One must question this strategy; if someone would be duped by the first domain name, they’d surely fall for the second one. Or Ameritrade.bike, which isn’t registered.)

Perhaps more interesting is that Verisign discovered that 16% of second level domains registered in fresh top level domain names aren’t registered in .com.