According to the latest Domain Name Industry Brief published by VeriSign, Inc. (pdf) the Domain Name Industry ended the first quarter of 2010 with more than 193 million domain name registrations across all of the Top Level Domain Names (TLDs), an increase of 11 million domain name registrations, or 6 percent, compared to the first quarter of 2009. Compared to the fourth quarter of 2009, domain name registrations grew 0.6%.
The overall base of .com and .net domain names grew to 99.3 million domain names in the first quarter of 2010, an increase of 2.7% increase over the fourth quarter and a 7% increase over the same quarter in 2009 and a 10% increase from the previous quarter
New .com and .net registrations were added at an average of approximately 2.7 million per month in the first quarter of 2010 for a total of 8.1 million new registrations in the quarter in increase of 10% from first Q 2009.
The renewal rate for the first quarter of 2010 was 72%, an increase from the fourth quarter of 2009, which was 71.2%, a 1.2% increase.
88% of .com/net’s resolve to a website.
VeriSign’s average daily Domain Name System (DNS) query load during first quarter 2010 was 54 billion per day with peaks as high as 63.2 billion per day. Compared to fourth quarter 2009, the daily query average and the daily peak queries both saw an increase of 4%.
In ccTLD news .cn registrations dropped from 2nd place to 4th place due just in 1 quarter, to increase governmental restrictions in China.
Germany ccTLD, .de moved up one spot to number 3, due to china’s drop. Actually there are more .de registrations than .net registrations.
Compared to the 4Q of 2009, there was “notable growth” in the following extensions:
.US 15.9% increase
.pl 7.5%
.ru .7.4%
Compared to first Q 2009 the ccTLD that grew the most were:
.ru 34.4%
.pl 29%
.br (brazil) 25.9%
We use to think the tasters were driving the quarterly increases.
Since, domain tasting has been curtailed (not elliminated) because of reduction in ppc ROI and the Icann mandatory fee, what is really driving new registration?
Are people and businesses registering crapper .com instead of using a better keyword description in a different tld?
(example tlds – .info, .us, .biz, .ca, .eu, .org)
This report is something I always look forward to reading.
2.7 million new .com/.net registrations per month.
That’s an eye popping stat to me.
There are still millions of domains being registered in .com each quarter.
Another
People are registering more .com/.net but also some are turning to ccTLD, I noted with interest the increase in registrations from 4th Q 2009 in .US registrations for example.
Moreover I’m seeing a ton of good domains dropping for the last few months and just because a domain is available doesn’t mean they are crappy
Does a parked page count as a “Resolving Website” ?
.info has been the fastest growing gTLD outside of .com for the last six months or so. Often the daily increase in the number of .info’s exceeds the daily increase in the number of .org’s and .net’s combined.
BusinessWebsites
The report says clearly that a parked page does in fact count as a resolving website.
VeriSign use to report on the % of parked pages but no longer does.
The last time they reported this info they said parked pages represented around 7% of all com/net registrations
Excellent news for us- this shows that people are beginning to understand the power of domain names.
And mostly, people wants to be noticed and heard. Hell with those big media companies.
What is driving a lot of .com registration is a parallel ccTLD registration pattern. New businesses registering their domains in ccTLDs will also register the .com variant if available. The second largest ccTLD is now the UK’s .uk ccTLD rather than .cn ccTLD.
As regards the parked webpages percentage, I would think that it was higher than 7%. If they were using the very simple metric of counting domains on the PPC company nameservers then they may get such a low figure. However some PPC/parking operations like Sedoparking provide Javascript that can be used to park a page when the domain remains on the registrant’s own nameservers. Others even go as far as obscuring the html to make the parked page appear to be a natural (rather than cookiecutter) webpage. The report does not distinguish between a PPC parked pages and holding pages. With the rise of control panels over the past few years, new websites will have a default holding page until the user uploads their site. Sometimes the hoster will park these unused domain names on its PPC holding page.
The problem with looking at these registration figures purely as a domainer is that they may appear confusing. This is because the registrations driving the growth is not due solely to domainers. The domain tasters were responsible for the extremely spikes of domain registration will tasting was allowed but there was always a natural level of domain registrations. When domain tasting was restricted, the natural levels of domain registrations became more apparent.
.US up 15.9%. Definitely.
Considering that most domainers have been trimming down their portfolios in the last few months, I wonder if the increase in registrations is more due to those small businesses and regular people who are finally getting an online presence. Theoretically the total number of registered domains can increase by ten folds or even more in the next five years as more and more people and businesses get their own website for the first time, although some of those numbers would probably have to be contributed to the new TLDs once those are out.
PS: I just added a few more Visit+City.US to my collection today, so I might have had a small part in the increase in the .US registrations. 🙂
Does a parked page count as a “MPC Akai” ?
.ru zone is the best
i try .org zone