Real world adoption of TLDs can be gauged at industry events, when peers promote brands, products and services.
Affiliate World held a two day event in Bangkok, inviting professionals from all over the world to connect and trade.
Sedo attended the Affiliate World / Asia conference, one of more than 200 exhibitors participating. The event has now closed but we managed to analyze the exhibitor data, as each one had their own profile provided by the AW operators.
Cleaning the data took some time and some Python coding, with the final data set consisting of a list of companies that were event sponsors and exhibitors and their respective domain names. From these domains, we extracted the TLDs.
A quick analysis shows that .COM is the undisputed king, with almost 82% of the total. Dot .IO is second with 4.63% use, and .NET is third with 2.31% use.
Some interesting points from the TLD adoption numbers among affiliate marketing professionals:
- Dot .IO is still a strong contender, maintaining the exact footprint it had in similar data sets six years ago (4.36% in 2016.)
- In the same time frame, .COM use has dropped 3.3% – from 85.23% to 81.94% – well within statistical error margins.
- The cumulative use of non-generic ccTLDs such as .IN, .NL, and .EU is less popular than that of gTLDs such as .Network, .Agency, .Partners, .Team etc. The reason: Companies use keyword+gTLD pairs to form meaningful brands.
- The only .LY domain was (drumroll) Bit.ly that is a popular URL shortener.
- Dot .CO appears to have lost its appeal.
- Despite a push for the opposite, dot .XYZ is also of minimal use; we should keep in mind this wasn’t an event related to NFTs or crypto.
Here’s the list once again in alphabetical order:
Note: this is not a scientific analysis and it reflects a representation of TLD use among affiliate marketer exhibitors at a single industry event.
