Wow, United Domains is all in with Fresh TLDs

Want to register a .com at United Domains? You’ll need to poke around the site a bit.

We know that fresh top level domains are a growth opportunity for domain name registrars. But ought to domain name registrars forgo current registrations in favor of promoting future registrations of fresh domains like order.pizza and play.games?

That’s what United Domains, part of the same family of firms that runs 1&1 (which is running TV commercials promoting fresh TLD “pre-reservations”), is doing.

Here’s UnitedDomains.com’s home page:

There’s now a header at the top for “Fresh Top-Level Domains” and “Classic Domains”. The domain search box on the landing box defaults to fresh TLDs. If you’re looking for a domain and plug a keyword into that box, you won’t see any .com, .net, or other existing options. Just a chance to “pre-register” .web, .shop, and .music. Some of these domains are likely not to come out for another year!

In other words: United Domains is willing to lose some clients now in order to build its lead list for fresh TLDs.

The home page actually slides through three promotions. The second promotion is for the Trademark Clearinghouse. When the Trademark Clearinghouse promotion is on the page, there’s no domain search box at all.

It’s not until you get to the third slide in the sequence that existing domain names are promoted.

United Domains has over 300,000 registered .com domains.