Which registrars are top for a domain can help explain TLD growth.
It can be difficult to judge the success of a top level domain based on the number of registrations. Unfortunately, that’s all we usually have. But digging down just one level can give a hint about the quality of a namespace’s registrations.
Take a look at the #10 domain on nTLDstat’s charts: .LTD.
It appears that this domain is doing quite well with about 500,000 names in the zone file. But take a look at the breakdown by registrar and things look fishy.
Alibaba is #1 with 93% of the market. West.cn is #2 with another 3% of the market. So over 95% of registrations are at Chinese domain name registrars.
The “Limited” corporate identifier comes from the UK but also extends to former colonies. Think Hong Kong. And there’s a corporate identifier in China that translates to Limited.
But over 93% of registrations coming through one Chinese registrar? Such a big skew to one Chinese registrar is perplexing.
It’s also strange when you see sudden jumps in registrations outside of the launch phases:
This suggests that much of the activity is based on promotions and bulk registrations rather than people registering the domains to use for their business.
Compare this to Google’s .app and its 300k+ registrations. The #1 registrar is GoDaddy, which is a good sign because GoDaddy is by far the largest registrar in the world. #2 is Google, which makes sense given that it’s Google’s TLD. Then you have Namecheap, West263 and Name.com. Seems reasonable.
Are many of these registrations from investors? Sure, but these are also likely spread out across many domain investors. I also like how smooth this registration curve is:
This isn’t to say that there’s a problem with the business model of targeting Chinese domain investors. At the same time, it’s worth looking at the registrar data and trend lines to understand more about how a TLD is growing.
Robert Hawkes says
A really interesting post! While totally agreeing that registration data can be used to see the impact of promotional pricing (of course the history graphs at TLD-List will show it more directly), I am uncomfortable with using the word ‘fishy’ . Yes, as for a number of other extensions (including .top) most of the registrants are from one region so it seems to me natural that the dominant registrar in that region will have most of the registrations. Incidentally they are also the most used ngTLD registrar in the world in terms of all extensions as per nTLD data. While the graphs you show are striking, to be fair I think you should show first year only comparison for .ltd, and in that while not as smooth as .app it is much more smooth than the longer interval you show.
Andrew Allemann says
I don’t use the term fishy to mean that anyone did something wrong…just that the numbers warrant a deeper look. Fair point, though.
Imran says
I would point the same. The usage of word fishy is inappropriate here.
In India, the registered company names end with the word ltd. Similar is the case with many other countries. Therefore as an example, the AAA ltd company will naturally find its name in aaa.ltd which makes it more credible.
This suggests that the extension .ltd has huge potential in several countries. Perhaps the Chinese investors understand this which reflects in the registration.
The registrant of co.ltd is trying to provide companies with subdomain in their extension yourname.co.ltd Refer the link http://www.nic.co.ltd/en-US/
As a domainer, I see a solid investment in .ltd region as there is a market in the asia and other regions.
Samantha Frida says
I would not compare dot LTD to a dot APP.
They are two very different TLD extensions, which is the very essence of nTLD’s, to provide options beyond legacy TLD’s.