Spring has sprung! As we close the door on April, we can take stock of the .Brand domains that just blossomed. The ‘.Brands’ are Top Level Domains (TLDs), from the 2012 ICANN new gTLD application period, that represent well-known Brands/Trademarks and have Specification 13 amended to the Registry Agreement. Thirty-eight .Brands registered 181 domains in April 2017. While this is not a large volume for legacy TLDs, like .COM or .NET, this is quite a development since only 111 .Brand registrations were completed in Q1 2017. Provided below is a profile of the .Brand (.WEBER) that blossomed the most in April; some career type .Brand registrations; and other details on the April 2017 registrations.
.WEBER
The .WEBER registry operator, Saint-Gobain Weber SA, completed 55 two-letter domain registrations in April bringing its total domain count to 67. Weber is a privately held French building and construction materials company that was established in 1900. The new domains resolve to content by re-directing to existing web pages on .COM or country-code TLD (ccTLD) domains; e.g., PL.WEBER redirects to the Polish content on NETWEBER.PL.
Approximately 96% of the .WEBER domain registrations are two-letter labels; the exceptions are DESIGNSYSTEMS, GLOBAL and WECARE. The label is the term to the left of the dot in a domain name; e.g. GLOBAL in GLOBAL.WEBER. The company continues to use HTTPS://WWW.E-WEBER.COM as its primary domain. The .WEBER TLD application states that:
the .weber gTLD will be used by Weber to provide information services and resources of its building and construction services to consumers in a way that promotes trust convenience and innovation.”
Career Type Domains
The CAREERS label has consistently ranked in the top five of the most registered labels by .Brands since we started tracking in Q1 2016. The .SCHWARZ .Brand team added four career/job type domains and .BNPPARIBAS added one. The Schwarz Group is a family-owned German retail group that owns and operates the Lidl and Kaufland big-box discounter brands. The Group also manages the .LIDL TLD and also registered the CAREERS label there; i.e. CAREERS.LIDL. BNP Paribas is an international banking group headquartered in France.
Other observations on April’s .Brand domain name registrations:
– 38 unique .Brand Registry Operators registered 181 domains in April 2017
– Sixty of the registered domains are two-character letter-letter labels. Letter-number or number-number label domains were not registered. The majority of these were registered in .WEBER with a count of 55; the remaining 5 were registered in 5 unique .Brands
– The longest .Brand label in April was 27 characters; .AUDI registered SERVICE-IRUDZKI-SANDERSDORF.AUDI but it does not resolve to content at this time. Sandersdorf is a village in Northeast Germany. The .AUDI TLD currently has 577 registered domains.
– .WEBER had the most registrations in April; .SEAT was a close second with 53 registrations. SEAT S.A. a Spanish automobile manufacturer operates .SEAT and currently has 153 registered domains.
– 35% of domains resolve to active .BRAND domain pages; 24% resolve to ccTLDs domains; 31% are Inactive; and 10% resolve to .BIZ COM or .NET domains
As Spring passes and we rejoice in the coming Summer don’t forget to check this space so that we can keep you up to date on the latest in .Brand trends.
