Google’s new parent company gives lift to .xyz domain group

Shares in a little-known London-based business have surged this week on the back of Google’s decision to use the web address www.abc.xyz for its new parent company.

Aim-listed CentralNic has an exclusive deal to market and manage the .xyz web domain on behalf of Daniel Negari, a 29-year-old US entrepreneur who created the new suffix last year.

CentralNic's share price jumped 26 per cent on Thursday and has risen by almost half since Monday, when Google announced that it would restructure its businesses under a new holding company called Alphabet.

Google gave Alphabet the web address abc.xyz because suffixes such as .com and .net were taken.

Hundreds of so-called “top-level web domains” have been launched over the past three years.

CentralNic said .xyz is the most popular new top level domain. In the 90 days to the end of last week, it had about 222,000 registrations – an average of 2,466 a day. After Google announced Alphabet, daily demand has tripled.