New research suggests that a lack of remaining domain names with easy to remember – and consequently valuable – word combinations is restricting Internet growth, with an untapped demand of as much as 25% of all current domains being held back. The study’s author contends that the findings show ICANN’s release of new top level domains could prove a wise policy.
As the digital age dawned, pioneers successfully snapped up broad swathes of the most popular and memorable domain names, such as nouns, places and combinations thereof – claiming valuable ‘virtual real estate’ under the top level domains such as dot-com, dot-co-dot-UK and so on.
Now, the first research to try and define current demand for Internet
domain names suggests that the drying up of intuitive and familiar word
combinations has seen domain registration drop far below the expected
appetite, given the extent to which we now live online, with new entrepreneurs
struggling to find “their slice” of virtual space.
In fact, the study estimates that the lack of available high quality
domains featuring popular names, locations and things could be stifling
as much as a further 25% of the total current registered domains
.However, as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has begun to roll out the option to issue brand new top-level domains for almost any word, whether it’s dot-hotel, dot-books or dot-sex – dubbed the ‘not-coms’ – the research suggests there is substantial untapped demand that could fuel additional growth in the domain registrations.
Google were one of the first to use a ‘not-com’ to get around the domain name shortage. Finding all obvious domains taken for its new parent company ‘Alphabet’, the company acquired space on the new dot-xyz domain to create the canny web address: www.abc.xyz.
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