Centralnic sales of top-level domains surges on xyz

Boosted by the popularity of the .xyz website suffix, CentralNic has become the first internet registry wholesaler to sell more than 2m new top-level domain (TLD) names, according to industry data.

The London-based company has grabbed a 21.21% share of all domains registered globally using new TLDs to become top-ranked 'registry backend' in the industry, slightly ahead of Rightside Registry, which is owned by US internet group Demand Media.

CentralNic has exclusive registry ownership of four client TLDs that have figured among the top 20 new TLDs out of 768 launched to date. These are: .website, .online, .space and .xyz.

Partly helped by the adoption of Alphabet.xyz by Google's new Alphabet parent company 'xyz' has become leading new TLD across the globe, with almost twice the registrations of any other new TLD.

Shares in CentralNic were up 10.2% to 59.50p by the afternoon on Tuesday.