.COM growth slows in 2014

Lower growth but much better than new gTLDs

[jmccormac]

The monthly growth figures for .COM show that the TLD's growth is slowing. [hosterstats.com...] However the number of new registrations each month in .COM is more than the entire number of new gTLD domains registered to date. The other main TLDs are not doing as well as .COM and some of them are losing domains. The .INFO, .MOBI and .ASIA are continuing to lose domains and the renewals for the .BIZ promotion last year are approaching. The .BIZ promotion boosted the registration figures but web usage in the gTLD has traditionally been low compared to .COM and the ccTLDs.

The slow-down seems to be part of a consolidation trend that has been happening for the last few years. The launch of the new gTLDs has had little impact and many recently launched new gTLDs are struggling to get more than 100 new registrations each day.

The .COM TLD is still growing and the August figures rebounded nicely from the trough of the May, June and July net growth figures.

Regards...jmcc

[bwnbwn]

The growth means nothing. The cost of the web has gone up to the point many small developers can't make it. What really needs to be a measurement is growth to sustainability. I know many startups that didn't make it and just let the site sit there for years.

If the actual numbers were done I believe it is shrinking.

Many hold on to worthless domains thinking it might make a dollar one day, I know I have some of them myself.

[jmccormac]

Growth means growth. I did a 110K web usage survey of .COM in July and it is a reasonably reliable guide to trends in .COM usage. Startups have a high attrition rate but the duplicate content issue is more of a ticking timebomb. These are domains that are registered in addition to the registrant's primary domain. They are pointed to the registrant's primary site without a proper 30n redirect.

Google's site murdering algorithm tweaks have had an effect and it has pushed a lot of sites out of business. The attitude of some domain owners to their non-core domains is like holding on to a rising balloon. It is just a question of when to let go. It can take about three renewal cycles for the registrant to make the Hold 'em or Fold 'em decision.

Regards...jmcc

[Webwork]

jmcc, was there a slow down in .Com registrations in past years during the May->August period? (Interesting time period as kids, in the States, come home from school during that period.)

Have you mapped .Com registrations to other economic variables?

Do you have stats that map "purported" country of registrant to .Com regs?

Lastly, do you know the percent of domains that are hiding their WhoIs data?

[jmccormac]

Yep Webwork. The slump is apparent in two of the years. The numbers are calculated from the counts on the first of the month so there could be a third level aspect with colleges finishing for the Summer. The higher registrations hump in the first part of the year is somewhat counter-intuitive. While there should be an uptick in registrations coming up to Christmas, the increased registration volume in the first part of the year is unusual.

I haven't mapped the .COM regs to economic variables as the time lines might be different. Only Verisign would have the accurate country of registration stats but I have a chart ( [hosterstats.com...] ) of the gTLDs by country of hoster. It is from February 2014. I could probably add the data to a map but it will take a day or so.

There were some ICANN studies on the WHOIS privacy issue. They were based on statistical samples rather than a complete domain by domain check.

[icann.org...]
[icann.org...]

Regards...jmcc

[matrix_jan]

Many hold on to worthless domains thinking it might make a dollar one day, I know I have some of them myself.

I let one of my domains expire, checked yesterday and a company registered it and sells now for $2k. It's funny because that domain name made sense only to me, and all the other TLDs are available.

[RedBar]

I let one of my domains expire, checked yesterday and a company registered it and sells now for $2k.

Yep, I have loads of the same story over the past 5-6 years, the names are still for sale, ALL of them, and we're counting into the hundreds now.

Let 'em go, no gain, no shame, so many parked and unused names, it's a pity however making up quality, marketable new names is no problem.

Too many domainers are living in the past ... YMMV !.!.!

[bwnbwn]

See the same all the time matrix_jam and RedBar. I don't care what stats you can produce the net is retracting as far as active websites. Buying/selling expired domains in the .com but in all reality means nothing IMO, but what the heck do I know.

[turbocharged]

Considering that Google controls 80%+ of the search market and 50%+ of global advertising, their negative growth and anti-small business policies can't be ignored. Wealth has and continues to be consolidated.

I think it's common knowledge that Google favors the Fortune 500 companies. Unless new registrants plan on building a website and going public, they may be better off saving the domain registration fee and publishing content on Facebook or selling products on Amazon or eBay. That's the other ill effect of Google's policies - publishers creating content that somebody else owns the minute they publish it on someone elses domain. So much for the internet freedom that Google claims to support. Their actions speak otherwise.

[nomis5]

Wealth has and continues to be consolidated.

That just about sums up what has happened to an alarming degree on the web over the past three years.

I registered a .co.uk domain about four years ago and now have a partially developed website on it. At the time .com version was for sale at around £16k, with several of the other TLDs registered by the same owner. They hadn't however registered the .co.uk domain.

That .com domain is now worthless unless bought by a company with enough money to develop it in a major way.

Agreed some people made nice fortunes out of .com domains but those days have passed into the distant past. But still some hold onto them on the faint hope that they can turn a buck. Most are sadly mistaken and many are now realising that. The die-hards will hold onto them ..... until they die probably.

[cabbie]

The attitude of some domain owners to their non-core domains is like holding on to a rising balloon. It is just a question of when to let go. It can take about three renewal cycles for the registrant to make the Hold 'em or Fold 'em decision.

Many hold on to worthless domains thinking it might make a dollar one day, I know I have some of them myself.

Too many domainers are living in the past ... YMMV !.!.!

But still some hold onto them on the faint hope that they can turn a buck. Most are sadly mistaken and many are now realising that. The die-hards will hold onto them ..... until they die probably.

Can you guys stop talking about me.
It's quite confronting.

[jmccormac]

See the same all the time matrix_jam and RedBar. I don't care what stats you can produce the net is retracting as far as active websites.

At times, it is hard not to think of Google and their algorithm twiddlers as truly evil site murderers who never created any website of worth. But that's a bit extreme. However Google is a major factor in the perception that the active web is shrinking. It is not. While not every domain is developed into a website. The problem is that most people have no idea of the scale of the web or the number of active websites. Many websites are rarely updated from one year to the next. People used to use search engines to find new and interesting sites. However around 2005, Google killed that kind of serendipity.

Regards...jmcc