XYZ.com LLC, a domain name registry operator, has acquired some 4 domain extensions from the French fashion conglomerate L’Oreal in a big boost to its existing domain portfolio.
The company acquired .beauty, .makeup, .hair and .skin from L’Oréal with completion on 10 January 2020, according to information made public by ICANN.
L’Oréal TLDs
Contents
L’Oréal is the world’s largest cosmetics and beauty product manufacturer; it applied for 15 new gTLDs in ICANN’s gTLD expansion program. 5 of the 15 were gTLDs for generic terms related to its business interests (.beauty, .skin, .makeup, .salon, .hair), and the other 10 are Brand TLDs representing brands it owns (.redken, .lancome, etc.); one of its 10 brand applications is an IDN (.欧莱雅) for “L’Oréal” in Hans Chinese.
L’Oréal hardly made use of the 4 acquired new TLDs with only .makeup have about 220 active domain names.
The French company – which failed in its acquisition of .salon as this was delegated to Donuts – has since dropped all of the Brand TLDs.
.quest
The 4 new acquisitions by XYZ Registry are in addition to another acquisition in November 2019 of .quest from Hong Kong-based Quest ION (HK) Limited.
The IT company had not made use of .quest with only 2 .quest domains ever registered, before its sale to XYZ Registry.
XYZ’s Plans
According to a release by the XYZ Registry, they are expanding their domain portfolio by gaining the exclusive rights to five new domain name extensions that will be made available to the public in 2020.
They are promoting .quest as “the expert new domain that signifies the solution to any search.”
“2020 marks an exciting new decade of consumer choice and affordable, creative naming options. XYZ’s mission as a technology company is to inspire and empower everyone to start or expand their great idea with a memorable domain name ending. We are excited
DANIEL NEGARI, CEO of XYZ Registry
to bring five new domain choices to the world this year for individuals, businesses and extraterrestrials to enjoy. Boom!”
Acquisitions
The launch of these new TLDs will make XYZ Registry the operator of 17 domain extensions with 12 of these based on acquisitions.
| TLD | Acquired from | Date |
|---|---|---|
| .rent | DERRent, LLC | 10 March 2015 |
| .protection | Symantec Corporation | 2 June 2015 |
| .theatre | KBE gTLD Holding Inc | 5 June 2015 |
| .security | Symantec Corporation | 11 June 2015 |
| .storage | Self Storage Company LLC | 18 April 2017 |
| .monster | Monster Worldwide, Inc., | 24 October 2018 |
| .baby | Johnson & Johnson Services, Inc. | 19 November 2018 |
| .quest | Quest ION Limited | 11 November 2019 |
| .skin | L’Oréal | 10 January 2020 |
| .makeup | L’Oréal | 10 January 2020 |
| .hair | L’Oréal | 10 January 2020 |
| .beauty | L’Oréal | 10 January 2020 |
XYZ Register is the operator of the popular .xyz domain extension.
The sunrise period for Beauty-Domains starts on December 1, 2020. During the sunrise period, brand owners can apply for identical Beauty-Domains. Registration of the trademarks with the Trademark Clearinghouse is necessary.
General Availability begins March 2, 2021.
Beauty-Domains are suitable for all websites that are related to beauty, beauty care and cosmetics.
Many users who are interested in Beauty-Domains will also be interested in Makeup-Domains, Hair-Domains and Skin-Domains, which are offered on the same dates and on comparable terms as the Beauty-Domains.
A study by Searchmetrics for the Berlin domains has already shown the connection between a better ranking in search engines and the new top-level domains. Websites with Berlin domains are often better placed in regional search queries in Google than websites with .de domains and .com domains. The result of the Searchmetric study can be summarized as follows:
“In 42% of the search queries .berlin domains rank better locally.”
Another study by Total Websites in Houston shows that the results of the Searchmetrics study can in principle be transferred to all new top-level domains, including Beauty-Domains, Skin-Domains, Hair-Domains and Makeup-Domains. Total Websites notes that Google uses the domain endings of the new top-level domains as an important criterion for the evaluation of a domain and therefore comes to the following conclusion:
“It is clear that the new top-level domains improve the ranking in search engines.”
Hans-Peter Oswald