Fresh TLDs (.XYZ?) boost Web.com’s bookings

“Very aggressive” fresh TLD promotions paying off for Web.com.

Many in the domain name community blasted Web.com and .xyz for the hundreds of thousands of free domain names Web.com gave away last year through Network Solutions. Was it, perhaps, a brilliant business move?

Web.com noted a bookings boost this past quarter, and the firm states this is due to higher-than-expected renewal rates on fresh TLDs.

Here’s Web.com CEO David Brown on the prior week’s conference call:

Yes, I want to be very clear that the bookings benefits that we’re seeing right now really relate to some of the fresh GTLD promotions that occurred. As fresh TLDs came out last year we were very aggressive in promoting that to our existing clients and to some fresh clients. And very aggressive in how we promoted some of the fresh GTLDs and we had certain expectations on what the renewal rates would be and we’re seeing higher renewal rates than we had expected.

And that’s yielding higher bookings than we had expected and we’re very pleased with that. These turned out to be very good returns on investment for us and so far this year the few that have gone through maturity cycle have been better than expected. And we’re optimistic that future ones will also be better than expected.

Brown doesn’t specifically mention .xyz, and the .xyz domain giveaways haven’t started expiring yet. But Network Solutions has been sending out renewal notices for them by now.

Web.com pitched many specific fresh TLDs to existing clients over the past year, but the only “very aggressive” promotion I’m aware of is .xyz, which were literally placed in client’s accounts on an opt-out basis. As stated by nTLDStats, 375,000 of Web.com’s 425,000 fresh TLD registrations are .XYZ.

That stated, Brown mentions multiple TLDs and that a few have gone through the maturity cycle.

It’s quite possible that .xyz is paying big dividends for Web.com.