Which top level domains are truly popular, part two

Which domains get used the most?

Last week I wrote about DataProvider.com’s analysis of new top level domains and which ones are popular.

As I mentioned in that post, there are lots of ways to measure new TLD popularity and none of them are perfect. But I think we can all agree that looking at raw registration numbers is highly misleading.

DataProvider.com has a “Traffic Index” score for domain names. It’s a proprietary measure that, according to its website, “uses anonymized connection data provided by global operators” to estimate web traffic to domains.

Of the top 20 most-registered TLDs, DataProvider.com calculated that .dev has the highest percentage of domains receiving moderate to high traffic. But .dev isn’t the biggest namespace. As I pointed out in the article, .club, with the second highest percentages, has higher raw numbers of trafficked sites.

So what if you take the raw numbers of registrations and multiply them by the percent receiving moderate or high traffic?

Here’s how that ranking looks:

1. xyz (by a long shot)
2. online
3. shop
4. site
5. store
6. club
7. live
8. top
9. app
10. cyou
11. tech
12. dev
13. space
14. fun
15. vip
16. life
17. website
18. icu
19. tokyo
20. buzz

If you look at only the high-traffic sites, the first four are in the same order but then the rankings change.

As I’ve stated before, I don’t have full confidence in any calculation I’ve seen about website usage in new TLDs. I think they overstate actual websites built on these domains. Still, I think it’s important to look at various calculations to think about the data in different ways.