Verisign recently released its Domain Name Industry Brief.
The briefing discusses recent trends in domain names. Verisign is the registry for .com and .net domains and therefore has access to a rich data set.
Among the more interesting data:
-As of the end of Q2 2006 there were over 105M domains registered. This is the first time a quarter has ended with over 100M domains registered.
-The top ccTLDs are .de (Germany), .uk (United Kingdom), and .eu (European Union) respectively. VeriSign discovered growth in a number of ccTLDs due to registry promotions and liberalization of registration requirements:
Several ccTLDs experienced very strong growth as a result of a more commercial and marketing-driven strategy. For example, .es (Spain) grew nearly 400 percent year over year driven by liberalized registration requirements and marketing. In addition, .be (Belgium) grew 119 percent year over year driven by a volume promotion, a rare tactic among ccTLD registries. France, long known as being among the most restrictive in its .fr domain name registration requirements, continued to liberalize its registration policies and opened registration to individuals in late second quarter; .fr grew 93 percent year over year.
-The VeriSign report referenced Dotster’s successful Happy Hour promotion:
Nearly six million new .com and .net domain names were registered in the second quarter. This represents a slight slowing in the growth rate between the first and second quarters and a 26 percent increase year over year. The growth was driven, in part, by strong marketing efforts. Registrars drew promotion concepts from different industries in the offline world. For example, one registrar pulled the time-tested “happy hour†concept from the bar to the Internet as it offered domain name registrations for very low prices for an hour on a designated day.
-Renewal rates continue to inch upward. 85% of domains that were renewed in previous years were renewed again, whereas 65% of domains going through their first renewal cycle were renewed. The chart below shows .com/.net renewal rates (source: Verisign).
Note that .com and .net renewal rates are significantly higher than new TLDs such as .info. The low cost of registry some of these “new” TLDs, couple with their use as “throw-away domains“, leads to lower renewal rates.
-60% of .com and .net domain names resolve to a web site, 26% resolve to parked pages, and the remainder do not resolve. Note that Verisign’s definition of a parked page is a site with one web page. Many parked pages may actually be considered realweb sites by this definition.
You can see the entire briefing here.
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