Public Interest Registry, the not-for-profit operator of the .org domain , today released the results of its bi-annual domain name report, “The Dashboard,” detailing the worldwide growth of .org over the past year.
The report reveals that in the past twelve months the total number of .org domains under management increased to 10,428,027 globally, a 1.4%increase in registrations since 2013.
Other findings outlined in “The Dashboard” include the following:
- Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and France also saw steady growth and continued to lead as the top five markets for .org registrants outside of the United States.
- .org continues to experience a strong renewal rate of 73.9%; more than 55% of registrants renewed after one year, 72.3 % of registrants renewed after their second year, and nearly 85% of registrants renewed after their third year.
“The Dashboard” also reveals that Asia continues to be a strong growth market for the .org domain.
In the first half of 2014, China, Japan and India saw notable growth, and now comprise more than 6 percent of the total .org market.
For more information on “The Dashboard” or to download a copy, please visit www.pir.org/dashboard.
It seems somewhat ambiguous on the renewals. A 55% first renewal rate is low. Then of these remaining domains, 72.3% renew on the second renewal. That’s 39.765% of the initially registered domains that are left. And 84.9% of those 39.765% of domains are renewed for the third time. That’s 33.76% of the initially registered domains make it to their third renewal? If this interpretation is correct, the 55% first renewal rate is rather low but if those figures above are right and only 33.76% make it to their third renewal, that’s a bigger problem for the TLD in that it is highly dependent on new registrations just to maintain its registration volume.
@John McCormack,
Actually, that interpretation is incorrect. Hopefully what follows clarifies the underlying issues. Basically we’d need to know about the age distribution of .ORG domains up for renewal. I can’t use an equation editor for blog comments; so pretend the parentheses indicate subscripts:
RenewalRate(blend) =
∑(year) RenewalRate(year) x QuantityToRenew(year)
___________________________________________
∑(year) QuantityToRenew(year)
For the sake of an example, let’s assume only 3 years of .ORG history with domains distributed by age as follows:
1,000 domains at year 1
10,000 domains at year 2
100 domains at year 3
… and nothing else.
We can assume the same year-specific renewal rates reported by PIR:
55% at year 1
72.3% at year 2
85% at year 3
Question: What does this give us for the overall renewal rate?
55% x 1,000 + 72.3% x 10,000 + 85% x 100
__________________________________
1,000 + 10,000 + 100
Answer: 70.9%
So what fits the PIR data best? Most likely they’re LESS dependent on the proportion of first-year renewals compared to the body of longer-term registrations. Essentially, we’re looking at a weighted average, and the center of gravity for .ORG is not year 1.
Thanks Joseph,
Without knowing the age distribution, it is difficult to know exactly. It might be interesting to run a zonefile comparison (taking the new registrations in the first year as the test set ) over four years to see how it plays out. Losing approximately 45% of first year registrations is a problem.