After slow start, company is grabbing share in recent TLD launches.
United Internet, a group of companies that includes 1&1, Sedo, InterNetX, and United Domains, appears to be taking a good chunk of the new TLDs market share away from GoDaddy.
United spent about $50 million advertising pre-registrations for new top level domain names. Yet GoDaddy was kicking its butt in registrations for the first batches of new TLDs that hit the market.
That has shifted in recent weeks.
nTLDstats.com has released updated numbers for the latest batch of Donuts domain names released today, and United led the way on each one.
*Only includes registrations under 1&1 and United-Domains.
These numbers don’t include all of United’s brands, just the ones advertised most heavily for pre-registrations.
You’ll note that 1&1 beat GoDaddy on three two of the five, and when you add United-Domains it won each match up except .builders.
I’ve noticed similar numbers from other launches in recent weeks.
A number of things could be going on here.
1. United has improved its technology for getting domain names when there’s competition. Pre-registrations are essentially like drop catching.
2. 1&1’s cut rate pricing is attracting customers from GoDaddy. 1&1 is offering the first year at about half of GoDaddy’s prices.
3. United is promoting new TLDs more heavily on its home page and email marketing channels than GoDaddy.
When you look at overall market share of new TLDs, GoDaddy is down to about 30%. 1&1 and United-Domains each have about 10%.
GoDaddy’s overall numbers weren’t helped by sitting on the sidelines for .Berlin, which is the second most registered new TLD so far. (1&1, on the other hand, gave .berlin registrations for free for a year to local customers.)
Of course, we’re also really early in the new TLD rollout process.
What do you think has caused this shift?
[Editor’s note: this story has been updated with a new chart and comparison based on nTLDstats’ revised numbers for the first day.]
I’ve shifted my pre-registration to 1and1 because of the price and because i was taken back two nice domains from GD after 3 weeks.That got me upset with GD.
The names were funds.today and flying.today
Today i won about 80 names.
Godaddy took back my names as well, and they told me to email a higher up dept, but they didn’t even respond. I do less business with them for that fact, and the other fact that their aftermarket is full of shill bidders, and lack of authentication.
What do you mean they took your names?
80 domains? are you going to be able to afford/justify renewals for them next year?
I’m not a fan of the new gTLD’s. Supply and demand is what drives prices. High quality .com names get premium prices b/c they are rare. New gTLD’s offer a lot more choices for small businesses to get a domain with keywords that makes sense to their business. The new gTLD’s are good for small businesses in that regard, but there will be such a small % of them that go up and command a truly premium value. People get confused enough with any extension that isn’t a .com and these will just add to the confusion.
I don’t think the confusion argument bears much weight, really. With search and of course auto-complete, I can’t remember when I last typed a domain’s TLD to access a website. The only real confusion I see is between singular & plural forms of the tld.
Really, I don’t believe the confusion argument has any merit. I can’t recall the last time I typed a domain’s TLD to access a website since search and auto-complete are always available. The only genuine ambiguity I observe is with the tld’s singular and plural forms.