Table of contents:
- Introduction
- How can domains determine your brand’s success?
- What are the top domain trends in 2025?
- AI is transforming the world of domains
- The rise of geographical and localized domains
- The emergence of new generic domain names
- The rise of optimized domain names for voice search
- Ensuring protection is more crucial than ever
- Conclusion
1. Introduction
A domain is an easy-to-remember address for a website. They exist to make the human search easier. It is what we usually type into web browsers’ address bar to get to the preferred website, therefore companies are willing to pay thousands of dollars to get the ideal domain name.
However, even after spending whole fortunes, success is not a guarantee. Businesses also need to monitor various trends, understand user behavior, and acknowledge the world of domains to create a successful domain strategy.
In this article, we will explain how domain names can enhance your brands’ profitability, and share 5 tips on the latest domain trends!
2. How can domains determine your brand’s success?
Domain names are a little slice of a very complex topic: and it is still hard to explain in a few words.
There are two main parts of domain names: the top-level domains (TLD), and the second-level domains (SLD). The SLD always appears before the “.”, and it can be almost everything if it passes some simple criteria. On the other hand, the TLD appears after the “.”, and its main purpose is to make some help to your computer’s DNS resolver.
Here is an example: in terms of “Instagram.com”, “Instagram” is the SLD, and “.com” is the TLD.
You can pick your desired combination of the SLD, and the TLD on domain name registrars’ websites, however, one combination can only be used by one website. That’s why some domain name sales can be as high as a million dollars, and why there are harsh battles for the best names.
1. What are the top domain trends in 2025?
In this part of the article, we will mention the five most important trends that will happen in the domain industry in 2025.
a. AI is transforming the world of domains
All-around chatbots, video and image generators, and specialized programming artificial intelligence. We all have that. And the world of domains will also not miss the AI boom. At the start of 2025, there were more than 600 thousand “.ai” top-level domains across the whole market. That is 10 times more than what it was in November 2024.
The “.ai” domain extension, which generally belongs to the country of Anguilla (which makes really big money from this trend), attracts tech companies’ attention mainly. They believe that their target audience will love this futuristic domain, and they can make them more attached.
There were two expensive sales of domain names that included “.ai” extensions in 2023. One was “npc.ai” for $250.000 and “you.ai” for $700.000. In 2024, out of the 100 most expensive domain name sales 10 contained “.ai” TLD-s.
We believe that the AI boom is far from over. We are still in the middle of it. Therefore, “.ai” domains will gain immense popularity in 2025.
b. The rise of geographical and localized domains
Country-code domains (ccTLDs) are great. With the help of them, you can target your potential buyers more precisely. For example, if you only want to sell products in one country, the “.com” domain is too general. However, with a “.uk” domain, you have control of two separate powers:
- Your potential buyers acknowledge that you are a local business
- Google rates your site higher across locals (because their algorithm recognizes that it is relevant for them)
In 2023 there was a 1.7% increase in ccTLD-s registration than in 2022. On top of that, there was a 2.2% increase in 2024’s registration than in 2023. We believe that it will neither stop nor decrease in the future. Even the most successful companies started to create localized subsites to raise the attention of different populations more precisely.
c. The emergence of new generic domain names
Generic domain names (gTLD) are those that describe a generic category rather than a specific brand, company, or country. One of the most prominent members of this club is “.com”, which was used by 44.4% of all websites in 2024 August. However, in 2023, that percentage number still reached 44%. The continuous growth that described the “.com” domain from 1998 suddenly stopped.
What is the reason behind that? It’s the rise of other generic domain names.
Nowadays, businesses are facing very oversaturated markets. It is very hard to be highlighted, and they need to take every option to beat their rivals. They realized that there are more opportunities in domain names than they once thought.
Therefore they started to reserve domain names that tell more about their industry, type of website, and even their goal for a futuristic life. “.tech” for startups and tech-oriented companies, “.shop” for webshops, and “.cafe” for cafe shops. From 2023 to the start of 2025, the overall number of new generic TLDs almost doubled. We believe this trend’s end is nowhere near.
d. The rise of optimized domain names for voice search
Around 20% of the global population uses voice search in 2025. That means every fifth user can only reach your site if the domain name is easy to pronounce.
It seems like a fun idea to replace designated letters with numbers. For example, the “O”-s to Zero-s, Or the “I”-s with One-s. It can demonstrate that your company is open to the younger generations, and has a funny tone. However, if they use voice assistants to open websites, the discussed changes will definitely decrease their user experience.
As a result, try to avoid using long domain names, and words that are easy to misspell.
a. Ensuring protection is more crucial than ever
As we already discussed, you can generally reserve an existing SLD, if it contains a different TLD than the other one.
That being said, “Pepsi.com”, and “Pepsi.net” can all exist under two different legal entities. However, enterprises have not let that happen. They reserve the other combinations for themselves, or as a last option, they start lawsuits to prevent identity thefts.
Because what else does the other company want in a case like this, other than take advantage of the fame of Pepsi? Unfortunately, if you are a little smaller fish in the sea you have fewer options to do. And customers are worried because of that.
You need to do two things:
- Reserve some of the identical domain names to yours
- Regularly monitor suspicious domain registrations
If you highlight this on your website, and the message can mitigate the risks to your buyers’ minds, your conversion funnels will be more healthy.
4. Conclusion
In this article, we introduced the world of domain names and some trends that will affect this industry in the near future. We believe if you move towards the trends, you can even build a competitive advantage.
