.Berlin more than doubles it registrations overnight. .XYZ calls.
Starting yesterday, certain registrars started offering free .Berlin domain names to customers in a promotion that will run through the end of the work week.
I posed the question if this promotion would enable .Berlin to overtake .xyz at the top of the top level domain charts.
After one day it would seem the answer could be yes. But I forgot to consider another factor: .xyz could rev up its own free domain engine.
.Berlin more than doubled its zone file yesterday, adding 67,000 registrations to hit 116,000.
.XYZ, which had been adding a relatively small number (compared to this) of freebies each day, revved up its engine to add 29,000 domains. That gives it 144,000 domains, still besting .Berlin.
Poor .club. It’s doing things the old fashioned way…charging people for legitimate domain registrations. The domain slipped to third place on 476 domains.
When they starting paying me to register these domains (e.g. like 50 cent got paid), perhaps then they’d get my attention. Otherwise, “free” just doesn’t cut it.
They still have a long way to go to reach the numbers of .tk…..
People only give useless stuff away for free. Promos, and throw in a drawer keychain stuff. The GTLDS are self destructing.
85% of .XYZ websites are hosted in the Virgin Islands. They are almost primarily on PPC landers. The geographical spread of websites is different to other new gTLDs. Even though it is an early phase TLD, that kind of PPC parking is not healthy.
Would expect a whole lot more to follow. The feeling I get is that the whole new tld program is falling apart with bogus/free registration. They might get to the top 10 or even number 1 but the prize for that is completely worthless.
Next we’ll have the spammers in and that is probably going to relegate all these free extensions to junk status.
If just a few percent of registrants who get free domains renew and keep on renewing, it will make money for the registries.
I think this “free promotion” was clever. Since the overtake of free registrations, the popularity is huge now. Everyone has forgotten about .club while berlin climbs the ranks in demand.
No matter where you look on the internet, all you read is .berlin and .xyz. Good job to those who thought out the promotion.