Company is counting on new TLDs for growth in domain name business, but it’s slow.
Neustar reported earnings yesterday and released updated information on its base of domain names registered.
.Co continues to perform well for the company, adding $5.2 million revenue in the first quarter. Additionally, the company has operating agreements with 122 new top level domains that have signed agreements with ICANN. 43 are already in market.
This chart shows how many domain names Neustar is managing, both as the registry operator as well as the backend service provider for others’ TLDs:
The Registry Operator domains are primarily made up of .biz, .us and .co. You’ll notice a big switch from Q1 2014 to Q2 2014. This is when the .co domains moved from backend provider to registry operator.
.Biz is easy to track since the company has to report numbers to ICANN. .Biz lost about a quarter million domains last year, which is probably why the number fell during the year.
The backend provider numbers are a bit harder to reconcile. Neustar runs the backend for .tel. I’m not sure where the rest of the domains early last year are from, as other TLDs it handles seem to be small. But much of the growth since Q2 2014 has been from new TLDs. Neustar runs the backend for .Club, which now has over 200,000 registrations. It also has .Science, which is also over 200,000 (although much of that growth came subsequent to the end of Q1). .NYC is also proving to be a winner for Neustar; it’s not clear which line item that’s under.
nTLDStats calculates that Neustar is powering 580,000 new top level domain names.
Todd says
“Company is counting on new TLDs for growth in domain name business, but it’s slow.”
Understatent of the year, Andrew.
The new tlds seem to only be attracting those who have a yearning to lose considerable traffic to the .com. I don’t see many entrepreneurs lining up to have this happen to them.
Any company that depends on the success of something as conceptually flawed as the gtlds will have a tough time.
Dennis says
@Todd or perhaps those who’ve registered in the 5 million+ new TLD addresses have picked up on a trend you’re missing. Look at the renewal rate of .COMs that were first registered in 2014 when new TLDs entered the market….less than 50%.