A unique web domain can often give a business the edge over its competition, but it seems not many local firms exploited this advantage using the unique .joburg, .capetown or .durban addresses.
According to the ZA Central Registry (ZACR), only 3 500 .joburg domains have been registered, 4 500 .capetown domains and bringing up the rear is .durban with only 2 500 domain registrations. In terms of .joburg, it represents 0.3% of all locally registered websites.
These figures, however, haven’t put a dint in the optimism of ZACR CEO Lucky Masilela.
“The Internet presence of our three leading cities is rapidly becoming a South African online success story,” says Masilela.
He added that he is confident that more people will register a city-specific domain.
“There is sustained local and overseas interest in the major cities that make the continent’s most diversified economic hub. As the economy continues to gather steam for a predicted better economic performance in 2017, we’re confident ZAdotCities registrations will experience continued growth,” he said.
Oddly, its seems that the number of city-domain websites have actually declined. In September last year, ZACR said that it had 11 300 websites registered to use those domains. Adding up the numbers from today’s announcement, it seems that only 10 500 websites have been registered.
What happened to the other 800 websites?
At the time Wayne Diamond, managing director of Domains.co.za, said that there was no need to panic about the low registration rate.
He said it took .co.za a good number of years to reach 450 registrations back in 1995. Granted, that was a time in which the internet was a luxury rather than the necessity it is today.
To boost the number of registrations, Domains.co.za revealed that registering dotJoburg, dotCape Town and dotDurban domain names would be the same price as .co.za domains.
“We’re hopeful that reduced dotJoburg, dotCapeTown and dotDurban pricing will help take the number of registered SA city domain names right up and over the 20 000 milestone,” he said at the time.
[Image – CC by 2.0/Franklin Pi]
