Global growth in domain name registrations fell by half this year, according to new research from .uk registry Nominet.
The organization’s Domain Name Industry 2008 report, (PDF) found that the average growth rates of 30 per cent over the past five years have dropped to just 15 per cent.
Generic top-level domains (TLDs) such as .com and .net were the most affected, seeing growth rates of 30 per cent in 2006 fall to under 10 per cent this year.
Country code TLDs performed a little better, bolstered by strong growth in China for the .cn domain, falling from 37 per cent last year to 26 per cent this year.
“Domain names have been around for a while and you would expect a levelling off,” he said. “The stellar growth of 20 per cent year on year cannot continue forever, but we are not seeing the massive fall we saw in 2000. This is rather a leveling off.”
Interesting post – I would not think so – but then again
There aren’t that many good domains avail to reg because the whole name space has been pretty much run through from each and every angle… And the growth year-over-year was fueled by many newbies and some amateurs who were riding high on false hopes and expectations.
Mike
It is a bit doom and gloomish. However some of the fall off of ccTLD registrations is due to some ccTLDs moving out of their ballistic landrush phases. Also some of these ccTLDs are growing more rapidly than others as their respective countries become ccTLD positive. (The numbers of ccTLD registrations exceeds the number of gTLD registrations.) The estimates of ccTLD versus gTLD market shares look optimistic. Without knowing the methodology I would be rather wary of trusting those figures. The gTLD counts for some countries may be inflated by the numbers of super registrars that actually have clients from a range of countries – mini-GoDaddies to some extent. Also the gTLD distribution are only reliable if it comes directly from the registries. Simply grouping by nameserver can and does lead to problems with super registrars.
The end of domain tasting immediately made the growth patterns in .com/net and .org more apparent. The decline of PPC revenue is definitely going to hit the bottom line for the gTLDs. However most of the growth in the gTLDs, especially in .com, has been driven by PPC. Limiting PPC revenue will correspondingly limit growth. However there is a hidden element to this in that the domain tasting registrars are like huge whales that depend on microscopic plankton. They have to sieve though millions of domains to find the ones that will monetise well. With that ability to sieve through those millions of domains removed or limited, these domain tasting registrars will have to develop more effective algorithms. But the problem is that all of them will be trying to use similar algorithms and will be going after the same easily monetised domains. This will also create an element of domain cannibalism where registrars will prey on their customers deleting domain names either to auction off or more likely to monetise for their back links. But that kind of activity may have some long term consequences for these registrars in that it diminishes the registrant-registrar trust. The worst and the best is yet to come. The worst could be that deletions will exceed new registrations earlier than expected in 2009 (December is traditionally a short month due to the holidays so the traditional registration blip might be more pronounced as tasting isn’t obscuring it to the same degree,). The best is that this will create a develop or die attitude to the web in 2009 where development becomes critical as declining PPC revenue forces some of the smaller operators (and a few of the larger ones) out of the market.
It’s actually a positive trend. It means that common sense is actually permeating the market. As WannaDevelop stated, people are now recognizing that value is in good quality domains, and not hand reg’s. People naturally migrate to common sense domains and that applies in practical daily use (for internet search) as well as domain investments.
If I’m searching for real estate in Dallas, there can be 45 Google ads and people will generally gravitate to DallasRealEstate.xxx. No explanation needed. All the multi-word derivatives and endless variations on that phrase are mostly noise. People realize that both consciously and unconsciously.