Only 3% of New gTLD Registrations Being Used for Business Websites

Verisign study shows vast majority of new gTLDs are simply parked

[Webwork]

From the Verisign blog:

. . we analyzed all second-level domains registered in new gTLDs according to published zone files on June 29, 2014. . . One key finding from our June 29, 2014, analysis is that 3 percent of domain names registered in new gTLDs contain business websites. In this case, we define “business” as a website that shows commercial activity,

Our analysis also found the most common use of domain names in the new gTLD space is Pay-Per-Click (PPC), with roughly 41 percent of all new gTLD domain names serving up PPC websites. A PPC website contains little user-generated content and almost exclusively advertising links.

The prevalence of PPC websites in the new gTLD space can likely be attributed to:

Heightened speculation in the new gTLD space;
The practice of several new gTLD registries to register their own domains which are still technically available at premium retail pricing,

Source: [blogs.verisigninc.com ]


Similar study by Eurid found somewhat divergent results, which Verisign attributes to Eurid using a different definition of "commercial website". Forwarding or redirection was deemed to be commercial activity by Eurid.

[eurid.eu ]

[creeking]

would have been nice to know the comparison with .COM , percent of the 100 million .COM domains used for a business website.


many people let their registrar park their domains till they are ready to use them. (registrar's ppc page)

[incrediBILL]

In this case, we define “business” as a website that shows commercial activity,

Had they actually defined commercial activity, that would be nice.

What about any sites set up to snare traffic and drive it to another commercial site is also a commercial site. Just because it doesn't have a cart on the site doesn't mean it's not part of a commercial enterprise, some SEO site, a page of purchased links, etc.

There's no way the masses of average Joes are just buying domains for the heck of it.

My money is on a very flawed study using very flawed methodology because the real methods needed were just too hard to implement, and they ignore those factors with blinders on and hype the inconclusive results.

I'm not buying it.

Apaprently PPC sites aren't a business?

Our analysis also found the most common use of domain names in the new gTLD space is Pay-Per-Click (PPC), with roughly 41 percent of all new gTLD domain names serving up PPC websites. A PPC website contains little user-generated content and almost exclusively advertising links.

Any site showing AdSense, affiliates links, banners or even paypal donate buttons is a commercial site in my mind as it's setup to generate revenue.

So plentyof fish, making over $80K/mo on PPC, isn't a business even though it's a registered business? LOL

I guess my business sites don't quality either because it's all PPC revenue that generated 6 digits a year.

Using my definition of "business" their numbers show 44% and taking some from the redirect pages and other categories being used by those businesses to drive traffic, I'm guess 50%+ easily.

This is a simple situation of narrowly defining business to the ridiculous point that it makes link bait headlines.

Nothing to see here, keep moving...

[gpmgroup]

What about any sites set up to snare traffic and drive it to another commercial site is also a commercial site?

What traffic? The vast majority of domains in new gTLDs are highly unlikely to have any natural traffic for the foreseeable future.

[jmccormac]

Webwork, I seem to recall stickymailing you about the web usage surveys I had run on the top ten new gTLDs on June 26th. But due to the archaic rules of this forum, I didn't post the links here.

It seems that when I posted the results of those surveys, it must have inspired others to try doing it too just as my 2 million domain website usage survey of .EU ccTLD "inspired" Eurid to come out with its toy surveys. I also ran 110,000 domain surveys on .COM, .CO, .EU, .CO.UK, .ES, .FR and DE. in early July as well.

I don't consider Eurid's efforts to be reliable and the 5,000 domain human categorised sample might make sense to some sociologist but it is not enough to accurately measure trends (duplicate content, brand protection etc) and the humans involved can't tell a clone website from another TLD from a genuine in-TLD website.

As for Verisign's results, some of them do line up with my results but there are some obvious weaknesses in the Verisign categories. (It misses the "For Sale" category and this is prominent in .BERLIN due to the free domains scheme that was abused.)

PPC is actually easy do identify and the Verisign results underreport it. They also seem to entirely miss categories such as "For Sale", duplicate content sites, clone sites, brand protection etc. The fact that they are lumping all new gTLDs together gives a very misleading overview because the new gTLDs are at various stages in their first year of operation. And .XYZ really skews the percentage of PPC because of the number of domains in the zone and the percentage of those domains on PPC. Some of the other new gTLDs are quite small by comparison.

The real methods required are not too hard to implement. It was possible to categorise web development and usage on the top ten new gTLDs within a few hours. But then I've been running monthly web usage surveys on a minimum of 350K sites each month.

Getting back to PPC, pages parked with PPC have different signatures to websites monetised with Adsense etc. However it is complicated by the fact that many registrars park undeveloped domains on PPC. This means that you have two different types of PPC in various TLDs (direct monetisation and temporary parking). The Verisign definition of business is unknown. The percentage of shopping cart/e-commerce enabled sites in a TLD is always lower than the percentage of "business" websites which includes brochureware websites.

If Verisign considers the Eurid surveys reliable and is following the Eurid categories then it is not reliably categorising the usage.

Regards...jmcc

[edited by: jmccormac at 5:13 pm (utc) on Aug 14, 2014]

[jmccormac]

would have been nice to know the comparison with .COM , percent of the 100 million .COM domains used for a business website.

A 110,000 domain statistical survey is generally enough of a sample to show percentages for the the main trends. This is the survey of .COM from early July.
[hosterstats.com...]

Some of the new gTLDs have high levels of PPC with .XYZ topping the list at 90.27% PPC. Others are a bit more in line with what one would expect from recently launched TLDs.

Regards...jmcc

[Webwork]

jmcc - "archaic"? Ouch! :p I prefer "tried and true anti-spam rules".