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The launch of the new generic-top level domain (gTLD) programme in 2013 may have contributed to a decline in domain registrations under traditional TLDs, brand protection company NetNames has claimed.
One of the possibly affected TLDs is .net, which after having a peak of 15.2 million registrations at the end of 2013 and early 2014, has since “shed around 300,000 domains”.
“As the new gTLDs have become available, registrations for some of the key pre-existing TLDs have been declining,” the company said in a blog post.
The first new registry to launch was .shabaka (which means ‘web’ in Arabic), in October 2013.
“The registration figures don’t show conclusively that new gTLDs have impacted the registration figures for a number of TLDs, but it seems more than a coincidence the declines have happened since the launch of these new gTLDs,” NetNames added.
gTLDs; NetNames; domain names, .net
