Sydney Joins Global Cities As Applications Open For Its Own gTLD
Sydney has joined a growing list of global cities such as London, New York, Vienna, Berlin and Melbourne with its own generic Top Level Domain.
As of today (4 December) residents and businesses in the state of New South Wales, along with providers of services to the state, can apply for their own .sydney domain in the Sunrise and Landrush, or pre-release, period. Sunrise closes on 3 February while Landrush closes on 13 February. General availability with the same eligibility requirements commences on Tuesday 17 February 2015 at 11:00:00AEDT.
Adrian Kinderis, CEO of ARI Registry Services – the Australian-based technology company managing .sydney and .melbourne – said the launch of .sydney would mark one of the most significant technology infrastructure projects in the State.
“A .sydney web address will provide businesses, individuals and service providers to the State with an innovative way to show an online affiliation to the city and increase geographical relevance to their target audience,” Mr Kinderis said.
“We know that city-based domain names like .sydney reward businesses by improving customer recall of their web address and enhancing trust through geographic association. They also provide greater message recall, increased engagement and search engine optimisation benefits that could give savvy businesses the edge over their competitors.”
The .sydney gTLD is hoping to emulate the success of .melbourne, which currently has almost 3,800 domains registered. With similar policies but a larger population base, it should be anticipated registrations would be slightly higher.
Mr Kinderis said there are many benefits for registering a .sydney web address and he expected many of the city’s leading businesses and proud residents to snap up the chance to own their piece of Sydney online.
Applicants who apply for a .sydney domain name during the pre-release phase will get a head start to acquire their piece of Sydney’s new digital real estate.
They will join some of the city’s most recognisable brands and personalities to be the first proud citizens of the State to use a .sydney domain.
More information on .sydney domains is available from www.nic.sydney.
Ehaber.com Wins Weekly Sales List at $45,000
Ehaber.COM,sold for $45,000,topped Domain Name Journal sales list of reported domain names for the week,ending November 30,2014.
Sedo had a great week in the sales chart,taking 14 of the top 20 positions .Correspondingly,NameJet took only five of the top 20 positions .
.COM dominated once again the list,with 13 of the top 20 positions.
Here are the top 20 positions for the two weeks ending November 30,2014 :
1. Ehaber.com $45,000
2. Bitcoin.com.au $35,182
3. Meixi.com $27,108
4. Converted.com $19,000
5. Vuxen.com $15,600
6. SignUp.net $13,000
7. Tanzkurse.de $11,067
8. We3.com $10,000
9. Originell.de $9,920
10. InnovationSpace.com $9,800
11. Smart-Watch.de $9,300
12. Sigi.com $8,788
13. HCV-Therapie.de $8,680
14. OKEX.com $8,000
15.tie Flagstone.co.uk $7,800
15.tie TheTravelCompany.com $7,800
17. BikeGlow.com $7,799
18. Atlantico.com $7,599
19. PrescriptionSunglasses.com $7,580
20. Magnetix.com $7,502
ICANN: IDN Variant TLD Program – Label Generation Ruleset Tool Project (P1) – LGR Tool Set Specifications Now Open for Public Comment
Purpose (Brief): ICANN intends to develop a tool to allow the Generation Panels and the community to develop and use Label Generation Ruleset (LGR) in the new machine-readable XML-based format.
ICANN is releasing the set of requirements for the development of this LGR tool for public comment, specifically to get feedback on (i) the completeness of current requirements, (ii) the prioritization done in the different phases for development of the tool, and (iii) any other aspects associated with the LGR tool requirements.
Public Comment Box Link: https://www.icann.org/public-comments/idn-lgr-2014-12-03-en
This ICANN announcement was sourced from:
https://www.icann.org/news/announcement-2014-12-03-en
.Paris – 6,848 Registrations on Day One Of General Availability ; .Moscow – 3,404 and .Gal -1,140
Three other new gTLDs entered General Availability. After the first 24 hours of General Availability, there were 6,848 .Paris domain names registered.
.Moscow had 3,404 registrations after the first 24 hours of General Availability, while .Gal had 529 registrations. .Gal will be used to highlight the Galician nlanguage, the Galician and the Galician culture.
These numbers also include registrations from Sunrise and Landrush period.
Verisign Reports 280 Million Domains Worldwide, But Growth Slowing As Query Load Skyrockets
The number of domain names under management around the world topped 280 million at the end of the second quarter 2014 with four million domain names added, according to the latest Domain Name Industry Brief from Verisign [pdf].
But the growth rate for appears to be slowing even if growth is still healthy. According to the Verisign report the increase of four million domain names globally equates to a growth rate of 1.4 percent over the first quarter of 2014. Worldwide registrations have grown by 18.6 million, or 7.2 percent, year over year.
This compares to the second quarter of 2012 where 7.3 million plus domains were added equating to a growth rate of 3.1 percent over the first quarter of 2012. There were 25.5 million domains added in the year to 30 June 2012, or a growth of 11.9 percent.
According to the latest report, released on 2 December, the .com and .net TLDs experienced aggregate growth in the second quarter of 2014, reaching a combined total of approximately 128.9 million domain names in the adjusted zone for .com and .net. This represents a 3.7 percent increase year over year and compares to a 7.8 percent increase over the second quarter of 2011. As of 30 June, 2014, the base of registered names in .com equalled 113.7 million names, while .net equalled 15.2 million names.
New .com and .net registrations totalled 8.5 million during the second quarter of 2014. In the second quarter of 2013, new .com and .net registrations totalled 8.7 million.
The order of the top TLDs in terms of zone size changed slightly when compared to the first quarter, as .cn (China) moved up two rankings from the seventh largest TLD to the fifth largest TLD, resulting in .uk and .org each moving down one ranking to sixth and seventh largest TLDs, respectively. All other TLDs in the top 10 maintained their rankings.
The largest TLDs in order by zone size were .com, .tk (Tokelau), .de (Germany), .net, .cn (China), .uk (United Kingdom), .org, .ru (Russian Federation), .info and .nl (Netherlands).
Total ccTLD registrations were approximately 129.3 million in the second quarter of 2014, with the addition of 2.2 million domain names, or a 1.7 percent increase compared to the first quarter of 2014. For the 12 months, this is an increase of approximately 13.3 million domain names, or 11.5 percent.
Among the 10 largest ccTLDs, two exceeded four percent overall quarter-over-quarter growth: Tokelau (7.3%) and China (7.3%). This marks five straight quarters where Tokelau has exceeded four percent growth.
At the end of the second quarter there were 283 global ccTLD extensions delegated in the root (including Internationalised Domain Names), with the top 10 ccTLDs comprising 66.3 percent of all ccTLD registrations.
One figure that is growing, seemingly exponentially, is the Domain Name System query load. During the second quarter of 2014, Verisign’s average daily DNS query load was 95 billion, compared to 68 billion two years ago, across all TLDs operated by Verisign, with a peak of 204 billion. The peak two years ago was 90 billion.
Compared to the previous quarter, the daily average increased 11.7 percent and the peak increased 70.4 percent. Year over year, the daily average query load increased 18.8 percent and the peak query load decreased 16.6 percent.
The report is available for download in full from:
www.verisigninc.com/assets/domain-name-report-december2014.pdf
There is also an infographic provided by Verisign that can be downloaded from:
www.verisigninc.com/assets/infographic-dnib-Q22014.pdf
