insight 

On Wednesday last week, we launched our domain name industry report at our first .uk registrar conference. This seems to have been well received by all in attendance and has got a couple of mentions in the media.

Some, though by no means all, of the content was already in the public domain. The challenge for us was to bring together a large amount of disparate information and present an overview picture of the .uk domain name industry within a global context, including some previously unpublished statistics (.uk renewals, registrant and registrar trends).

Since presenting this information, we’ve had some requests for other data to be presented in the future and are already investigating various strands of research. We’d like to know what you think of the report and what other data you’d be interested in seeing us produce. So if there’s data you think we’re in a position to obtain and publish, then please ask and we’ll see if it’s possible to get at it.

The conference itself was also a first for us. We wanted to present a day that would be of interest to our registrars, increase the understanding of the various issues that we are all faced with in the market at the moment and impart some of the latest information about how we’re trying to support our registrar community. Judging by the feedback on the day, we seem to have hit the mark for most people.

If you were there and feel we could have done better then, let us know how and we’ll bear it in mind for future events.

If you weren’t there and want to know what happened then take a look at the presentation slides here.

We’ve just released a position paper on signing the root. There is quite a lot to this but I thought I would attempt to summarise the paper for those of you who don’t want to read the full seven pages.

Read more

I see that there have been a few stories in the press regarding ICANN investigating the practice of registering a domain name based on the search someone has done on that domain name. As far as we are aware this practice is not widespread in the UK. Read more

Occasionally domain name stories appear in the media solely because the name itself is of big enough interest, as was the case this week with a small spate of tales about the web site acdc.com, which has recently come into the hands of the band ACDC. It’s a bit of an amusing story but it nevertheless raises one of those important points regarding Trademarks, domain names and cybersquatting. Read more

We’re watching the launch of .asia with interest. Yesterday saw the opening of the sunrise period during which organisations with Trademarks can register domain names. If there are multiple registrations for the same domain, then instead of the usual first come first served process as observed with the launch of .eu there’ll be an auction this time. Read more

I noticed with interest that NASK, the .pl Polish registry has made an announcement regarding a domain name tasting service. Read more

Earlier this month isnic, the .is Icelandic registry, relaxed its rules for overseas registrants.

“Foreign registrants of .IS domains have until now been required to confirm their ownership of the corresponding trademark at the Icelandic Patent Agency (Einkaleyfastofa) before the domain can be registered. This requirement has now been lifted. Read more

There were a couple of interesting stories in the news last week – a new CEO at denic the German registry and the intended transition away from .su the old suffix for Russia.

New appointments at denic

The news of the new appointments at denic is welcome. Sabine Dolderer and Dr. Jörg Schweiger will manage the business of DENIC eG as of 1 October as CEO and CTO respectively. We welcome these appointments and knowing Sabine of old we are sure she will do a good job for this important registry.

Retiring .su

The Register are running a story on the intended transition away from .su . This is a challenging matter for ICANN. As the world and its boundaries change, so the ISO list of countries and their 2 character ccTLDs change. If a country is no more, such as Zaire or Yugoslavia, then the relevant suffix is closed down and all domain names transitioned away. However, it’s not a simple process, as can be seen with the .su suffix, which is still registering names.

The story comments on other parts of the ISO list that cause ICANN headaches, including the comment that the UK ccTLD is .uk not .gb, as it is appears in the list. This appears to have stirred up some debate amongst the readership of EL Reg with several comments from their readership regarding why .uk is more appropriate and the usual end ramble from both sides of the pond about who invented the Internet anyway. Anyway, with more than 6 million domains we can assure you that .uk is here to stay.

We became aware of increased activity by the .tk registry (Tokehau – a small collection of islands in the South Pacific) recently when they opened their London office in August and have seen a real spike in media activity from them and massive increase in number of registrations.

There’s some interesting stuff about how they’re set up in terms of commercial arrangements and who makes what money (see http://www.dot.tk/en/pageC00.html), however, what’s interesting about them for me is the services they’re offering and how they’re getting people interested in the .tk name. They appear to have three core products:

1. a product that takes a long URL such as

http://www.nominet.org.uk/registrars/systems/serviceannouncements/

which then suggests a shorter easier to remember alternative, such as www.serviceannouncements.tk and sets it live for a 30 day period.

2. a free domain name registration service, which requires a level of visits and the .tk registry make their money by placing advertising on the site

3. paid for domain name registration which does not have to carry advertising

They appear to be selling direct and promoting themselves via PR and direct presence. I imagine they should get some good take up and that would certainly appear to be the case so far with their claims of 1.6m names already on the register and 10,000 new domains being registered per day. It would be interesting to know if they’re paid for domains or simply, the thirty day short URL product.

Other key questions for me are:

What will the take up be in terms of brands that actually use the domain as their primary domain?

How will they fair when it comes to renewals?

Will there be a secondary market and how will it fair in the long-term?

We’ve just received the results of some research we commissioned on the use of .co.uk domain names back in and they make for interesting reading.

We’ll be announcing the results in detail shortly, but I thought I’d give you a brief taster of the kind of information we have gathered.

The data supports previous research showing that UK businesses buy the .co.uk brand to promote their local presence. It further demonstrates that of those who have registered a .co.uk website a large proportion use them as their primary web site.

It’s also clear that online brand protection is also a key driver for choosing a .co.uk domain name.

We’ll be posting further details of the research in the coming weeks.