Verisign’s data release on gTLD distribution, titled “Website Usage Analysis in the New gTLDs” provides some insight about what the heck is going on in the world of gTLD domain names.
The data analysis uses the methodology described below, to identify the status of gTLD domains (developed/parked) after registration:
“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. “
It is interesting to note that while .XYZ is included in this report, the large percentage of registered XYZ domains – over 450,000 – skew the data, since 94.7% of .XYZ domains are registered at Network Solutions. These 377,000 .XYZ domains are known to be the result of an unprecedented “opt out” robo-registration campaign, resulting in domains that were not registered by their current registrants explicitly.
The Verisign report states:
“XYZ.COM LLC (.xyz) has a high concentration of PPC websites as a result of a campaign that reportedly automatically registered XYZ domains to domain registrants in other TLDs unless they opted out of receiving the free domain name. After registration, these free names forward to a PPC site unless reconfigured by the end user registrant. “
In other words: out of 1.8 millon gTLD domains, 21% is XYZ domains at Network Solutions, resulting in unreliable data for this Verisign report.
The data is not unreliable. It is when the new gTLDs are grouped as a single entity that the problems with .XYZ arise. The level of PPC parking in .XYZ is approximately 90.27% and the volume of PPC parked domains in .XYZ skews the figure. The new gTLDs should really be treated as single TLDs. But this might not please those promoting them – a total of 1.7 million domains sounds impressive. Individual new gTLD totals of less than 20K does not.
John – When the data is ‘poisoned’ then the report provides an unreliable assessment of the current status in the gTLD market. Agreed, the piling of all gTLDs into a single unit makes no sense.