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Analysis: next generation companies in China still prefer .com

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Kassey Lee reviews top level domain usage by top new internet companies in China.

Several years ago some domain experts predicted that the next generation companies would prefer new extensions because of better names at lower prices than .com. Is this trend happening now? I want to know, so do people investing in the Chinese domain market.

Long established magazine CI Week has recently published the “2017 Top 300 New Internet Companies” (2017新互联网公司TOP300) list, which provides an excellent source to study this trend.

I have selected the top 30 companies from the list for a detailed analysis. For each of the companies, I used Baidu search to find the domain name for its corporate site. The result is shown in the table below. Click here to continue reading…

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.Cam will be confused for .Com

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The similarity at quick glance will fool a lot of people.

.Cam is short for Camera, but businesses should consider registering the domains to reduce the chances of phishing.

Verisign objected when companies applied for the .cam top level domain. It argued that the string was too similar to .com and would cause confusion. One panelist agreed with Verisign and another didn’t, leading to the ICANN board intervening. Long story short, .cam is now a top level domain with about 4,000 registrations.

So, is .cam confusing with .com? It just was for me.

I was reviewing UDRP decisions on UDRPSearch when I came across a decision for WellsFargo.cam. I didn’t notice the a instead of o in the extension. I figured it was an IDN second level domain that looked really similar to the ASCII version. When I read the decision there was no mention of that, though. It took me about a minute to realize the top level domain.

If this fooled me momentarily, imagine what will happen to the average internet user who gets visits a phishing site that uses .cam?

I think it would be wise for large brands to register their matching .cam domain name for defensive purposes.

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Report suggests bright future for Chinese domain market

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Kassey Lee examines data from a recent CNNIC report.

If you invest in the Chinese domain market, you need to know CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center) because it publishes a national survey report twice a year on China’s internet landscape. The latest report — the 40th — was published in July. You can download it in Chinese here.

According to the report, China has 751 million internet users. This represents only 54% of the Chinese population so there is a lot of room for growth. Compare this number with the 323 million population of the entire USA and you can appreciate the sheer size and potential of the Chinese market. This number, coupled with the continued increase in internet-related products and services, means there will be an ever expanding internet economy, which in turn will create more companies and therefore more demand for domain names.

Only 54% of China's population is online. This means 700 million more potential growth.Click To Tweet

There are now 5 million websites, growing mostly at double digits over the last 6 years. This number is dwarfed by the estimated 77 million companies in China. This large gap may be due to companies not being online or running their business from ecommerce sites such as JD.com, etc. Eventually, these companies will want to move to their own address (domain name) to gain complete control of their business. Therefore, high demand for domain names can be expected to continue.

The report shows that 96% of the internet users go online via their mobile phone. This has significance for domain investors. Whatever you do for the Chinese market, think mobile. Make sure, for example, that the landing page of your domain name for sale is mobile ready. Also, 92% of the internet users use a messaging app as their communication tool, with Wechat and QQ being mentioned as the top ones. If you want to communicate with Chinese buyers, a Chinese messaging app may be your best choice rather than email which is popular in western countries. Click here to continue reading…

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.Com Winners & Losers

by — Domain Registrars 5 Comments

No change at the top other than fewer registrations.

ICANN published the latest official .com transactions report from Verisign, which includes data by registrar for April 2017.

There was no change in the order of the top five registrars ranked by total new registrations, although the numbers were down quite a bit from the prior month. March had more registrations than usual, which means there might have been some sort of end-of-quarter registry promotion with discounts and a reversion back to the mean in April.

Here are the top registrars in terms of new registrations:

1. GoDaddy* 867,537
2. Tucows** 184,327
3. HiChina 149,279
4. PublicDomainRegistry 116,235
5. Namecheap 116,132

Here are the top five registrars (open to the public) for net inbound transfers during the month:

1. HiChina +20,694
2. GoDaddy +11,791
3. Google +7,441
4. Epik +6,796
4. Google +8,199
5. NameSilo +6,648

On the flip side, these five registrars saw the biggest net outflow of .com domain names due to transfers:

1. eName -12,323
2. Fabulous -7,730
3. Tucows -7,232
4. PublicDomainRegistry -7,113
5. Domain.com -7,066

*Includes GoDaddy and Wild West Domains **Includes Tucows and eNom.

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Domain names in Costa Rica

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.Com is the favorite in Costa Rica.

I just returned from a weeklong vacation in Costa Rica. I hadn’t been to Costa Rica in 15 years, and my visit reminded me why people like to vacation there, but also the niceties of living in the United States (like well-paved roads).

Of course, I also paid attention to what types of domain names people used. Here’s what I observed:

1. Almost all of the domain names were .com.

2. Very few businesses used .CR domain names. A more common approach was to use .com with CR right before the .com.

3. Even though many businesses had a .com domain name, many used free email accounts for email (such as @yahoo.com or @hotmail.com).

One of the funniest photos I took was of this jack-of-all-trades storefront near the beach. How about some SEO work with your kayak rental?

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