A glimpse of what will happen when fresh TLDs hit their first renewal date?
Joseph Peterson considers what will happen when fresh TLDs come around for renewal.
2014 will be remembered — by those conscious of the domain industry at least — as the year of the TLD experiment. To what extent extensions such as .GURU, .PHOTOGRAPHY, .RICH, .LONDON, or .中文网 catch on with the general public remains to be seen. For a year, the question has been hotly debated. But it’s not a question; it’s hundreds of distinct questions, since hundreds of distinct fresh TLDs are part of this year’s rollout.
No second level domains registered under these fresh top level domains will expire in 2014, and today the expired domain market remains divorced from all the nTLD hubbub. Inevitably, though, sizable numbers of .CEOs and .VENTURES and .ENTERPRISES will turn up in expired auctions a year from now. During 2014, registration numbers can only go up. Yet during 2015, both upward and downward effects will coexist. In a sense, 2015 is the “tock” to 2014’s “tick”.
Actually, we can forecast 2015 to some degree. As of today, .GURU remains the most registered of the nTLDs — 55,355 total, as stated by nTLDStats.com. So let’s look at .GURU’s older siblings. I’m referring to .COM domains with a “GURU” suffix that were registered a year ago:
NameJet Pending Delete Domains
Period Covered: 3 days
Quantity: 67
Total Bids: 0
NameJet Pre-Release Domains
Period Covered: 33 days
Quantity: 48
Total Bids: 0
GoDaddy Expired Auctions:
Period Covered: 9 days
Quantity: 65
Total Bids: 0
GoDaddy Closeouts:
Period Covered: 5 days
Quantity: 33
Total Bids: N/A
This picture is incomplete, of course. Most importantly, other domains with comparable expiration dates were renewed. And these auctions aren’t over. I’d expect some bids ahead of they’re concluded. Some closeouts may have been purchased by now, vanishing from the numbers above. The keywords here won’t correspond exactly to registered .GURUs. And it may be argued that the .GURU release affects renewal decisions for these Guru .COMs. Yet that influence cuts both ways, since some .GURU owners buy matching .COMs.
Take a look at the lists and draw your own conclusions:
