During ts earnings call today Verisign (VRSN) brushed away the new gTLD’s saying “Gross registrations for new gTLD’s are at 1.6 million which puts them on Par with .Co”
Ouch
Verisign’s Representative went further to say that no one should build a conclusion on the new gTLD program until we go through a re-billing cycle (which we happen to Agree with)
“I think what you saw in the second quarter is a lot of confusion in domains including new gTLD’s in both the singular and plural of the same .word
Fair enough
But then Verisign went down the attack the domainer path otherwise known as biting the hand that feeds you saying:
The vast majority of the new gTLD registrants are Speculators”
Who would have thought?
One Stock stock analyst that covers Verisign asked:
“Do you know the amount of domain speculators that still own .com/.net domains, I think at one point when you reported it in 2012 was around 17%”
The Verisign Representative was then asked what the percentage of .com and .net domain names where registered to domainers, or domain investors or Verisign seems to like to call us “speculators”
I thought last time you reported that number in 2012 it was like 17%.
The Verisign Rep then spent the rest of his time, some 10 Minutes distinguishing between a guy like me, a domainer, domain investor, a “speculator” from himself who may have registered some names for future use but was definitely not like me.
Yup
That Verisign guy is way different from me.
I’m the one who has spent Millions and Millions of dollars paying Verisign to keep domains I think I can sell at a profit with no promise of a positive return
From a registry business perspective, end-users and domainers are different… but we need to further divide domainers between ocasional ones (like the types appearing in Go Daddy advertisings that register a few names) and heavy investors (like you). End-users are the least likely to drop a domain; it’s usually their dream or endeavor that’s represented by that name. Investors come next; if they think their return will be lower than renewal fees, they drop it. But ocasional ones, like the presenter identified himself, have the highest drop rate of all: they are less rational about whether to renew or not. So if a registry is too dependent on this type of domainers, it’s in heavy trouble…
… my position favoring end-user registrations is well known, but when a registry tries to pick the type of domainers they prefer, they should consider their bottom line before preferring one type over the other.
@Berkens,
No one should make the mistake you and the stock Analyst are making in this piece. And that is to assume that Verisign owns DOT COM. That is a foolish mistake. Verisign does not own dot com like the new Registries own the new gTLDs.
DOT COM belongs to all of us, and is regulated accordingly. Verisgn, and indeed ICANN only hold fiduciary responsibilities on it. Neither one of them can raise prices arbitrarily, or charge more for any name than the other pre-registration.
You are therefore comparing apples to bacteria.
On another note, there’s a point I’ve been trying to make, and have found it difficult to explain. Let me try again. The problem with new gTLDs is that they are unregulated. No business can trust their future on any of these Registries because they can (may or may not) but they can change the game at anytime, especially after a site becomes successful. They can simply snatch back the domain name, even if they are only required to give you a year or more notice. Now, who in their right kind will trust something like that? Imagine with explosion of new gTLDs coming out of ICANN’s asses, these Registries still have the temerity to charge thousands of dollars on unproven, strange extensions! Imagine what they would do if the thing actually works.
Google has singlehandedly intervened in their Proprietary production of Derivative Extensions. If we are ever aloud one comment, things are getting dicey in Blog land, a major player who chooses to Go Direct.
The VeriSign guy was wrong. New gTLDs are not like .CO ccTLD. That’s a single, initially highly speculated, ccTLD with low development. (It is actually a Truck Stop TLD where people visit before going elsehwere.) Indvidually, some new gTLDs have better development and usage percentages but not the registration volume of .CO ccTLD. Treating the new gTLDs as a single entity is misleading.
On the web usage survey of 110K .COM domains that I ran earlier this month, the PPC percentage was 16% with another 2% being on sale. Arguably the “speculated” figure is in the region of 18% just relying on PPC and sales being an indication. However the problem is that it is quite difficult to differentiate speculative registrations from registry parked registrations due to some of the larger registrars parking unused domains on PPC so it is necessary to add various known domain investor nameservers to the mix to get a more nuanced picture. I don’t think that VeriSign’s Domain Brief ever properly broke down the speculative percentage.
What Verisign, and the stock analysts, should be watching out for is COM/ccTLD position reversals in various country level markets. While the US is the engine for .COM and the de-facto US ccTLD, when a ccTLD overtakes the numbers of .COM domains registered in a country level market, the .COM (and the other gTLDs) start to become legacy TLDs. The .COM is still the global TLD but it is being replaced at a local level by ccTLDs. Domain pairing (COM/ccTLD registrations by the same registrant) has been keeping .COM numbers bouyant for the last few years but as more countries go ccTLD positive, it is having an effect on the demand for .COM. A highly localised business won’t need a .COM and relies, typically on a ccTLD.
@John McCormac,
“The .COM is still the global TLD but it is being replaced at a local level by ccTLDs. Domain pairing (COM/ccTLD registrations by the same registrant) has been keeping .COM numbers bouyant for the last few years but as more countries go ccTLD positive, it is having an effect on the demand for .COM. A highly localised business won’t need a .COM and relies, typically on a ccTLD”.
I agree with your premises on the quote above, and disagree with your conclusion, or interpretation of it.
Yes, .COM is the global TLD. That is never going to change. You first have to understand why it is the global TLD. I wrote about this once, and will refer you to it, if you can’t find it here (on Berken’s blog). The synopsis of it is that Dot COM is tied to America, her Written Constitution, Democracy, Strength, power, hegemony, and her mores ( BTW I own Mores.US {Mores is described as customs and conventions of a community} ). Those characteristics must change before .COM loses that global primacy.
Secondly, I disagree with your conclusion that highly localized business won’t need a .COM, to the contrary, the typical ccTLD starts off at maximum level, until the osmosis flows the .COM way; when a local business grows up, it wants to be a .COM. So, the direction is ccTLD to .COM, not the other way around. Anyways keep up your good work on data activities, we appreciate them.
@Domenclature
The highly localised business in a country level market is likely, in a mature market, to be a small business selling or offering services locally. Most of these don’t want or use a global TLD like .COM and many, still have their local ISP e-mail as their contact e-mail.
Traditionally, the .COM dominated most country level early markets but as the ccTLD gained registrations and awareness, it became the people’s TLD in that they began to identify with it in a way that they do not identify with .COM. Some local businesses will grow enough to want to become global and they might already have the .COM domain. But what happens in maturing ccTLDs is that the percentage of domains unique to that ccTLD (the same domain string not being found in .COM etc) begins to increase from around 5% to 20% or more. The early stage ccTLDs typically have an overlap due to generic keyword domains but there’s also a domain pair percentage for businesses operating in that early market where they register their business name in both TLDs. The US market is a separate case due to the poor historical marketing of .US ccTLD and the complete dominance of .COM in that market.
As with most markets, it is a numbers game and the number of small businesses is always going to be higher than that of global businesses in a mature country level market. However people outside a market generally see the high profile businesses selling globally but miss the local plumber or shopping mall. Most of those small businesses will never sell or service globally. The ccTLD > COM movement happens but it is at a far lower rate than the rate of new small business domains/sites appearing in the ccTLD.
@John McCormac,
There’s data gathering, and then there’s it’s interpretation. On the former, I give you an A.
It is interesting to watch how the world responds to domain name extensions. Although the introduction of myriad unnecessary extensions is one of my pet peeves, it’s still interesting to observe.
The general psychological characteristics, feelings, and behavioral traits of humankind, regarded as shared by all humans, is called human nature. And it is at play here. One of those traits is big dreams; nobody prefers good when they could have better. Nobody aims to be localized. Even a mom and pop, in one corner of their eye see the beginning of a global giant in his produce store; we all have them – desire, hope, dream, wish, longing, yearning, aim, ambition, expectation, goal, target.
Dot com is NOT for a global market. That is not what it represents. Dot com in folks minds represents fairness, steadiness, equality, opportunity, law, order, openness, fair prices, democracy, capitalism, strength, EQUAL OPPORTUNITY, the standard, all, in short, America. There’s an indescribable quality to it. It’s not tangible, or palpable, but you know Dot Com will treat a German the same as it will treat a Mexican, or Swiss, or English, or an American; you can register dot com whether you are from Jerusalem or Jericho; it doesn’t matter. Come as you are. It’s equal treatment for all; equal protection. The operators cannot do whatever they want; they are held accountable. You can not lose your name to the registry because he covets it. there are so many reasons. Dot De, Dot CA, Dot US etc etc all require you to be a resident of the corresponding country, but not DOT COM. It’s your extension. It’s my extension. It’s our extension.
It’s your extension. It’s my extension. It’s our extension…We Are One, Ole Ola.
All very nice aspirations, Domenclature,
And there is a kind of ideological attachment to .COM by some registrants. dotDE allows external registrations but requires a German contact for legal papers and service. dotCA and dotUS do have nexus requirements but dotUS seems to be rather less stringent about enforcing it. Back in the early 2000s, everyone had to have a .COM domain or they were not a player. This has changed with the rise of ccTLDs and the commoditisation of domain names and webhosting. With the growing country level markets, the small businesses began to register and develop domains in the ccTLDs. The problems of Domain Tasting in .COM (and other gTLDs) and ICANN’s continued refusal to deal with the issue (2005-2009) created massive demand in the ccTLDs because people were able to get domains in their local ccTLDs that they would not have been able to get in .COM due to the artificial scarcity created by Domain Tasting and Kiting. Indeed some of the new gTLDs had their genesis in that era of artifical scarcity and now, in a market where there is no such artificial scarcity, they are finding it hard to compete. Daily registration volume in some new gTLDs has fallen off considerably and their growth resembles that of small, early market, ccTLDs with small populations and limited recognition.
The .COM is a better TLD than many but it doesn’t just serve a single global market any more. It is a global domain but not a single “global” market. In addition to the “global” market sector of .COM (the businesses trading internationally), there are also the country level markets where .COM is still used as the business’s primary brand and website with these businesses concentrating only on their local market. These country level markets form a significant part of .COM. (The US market being a good example.) All those noble aspirations about .COM are balanced by the economic reality of having the make a living. What makes .COM attractive as a global option is that one doesn’t have to explain it and it has immediate recognition in the way some ccTLD or new gTLD does not. That’s unlikely to change for some time.
@ John McCormac
You’re a numbers guy, so I like reading your thoughts. However, it is verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic, that dot US, a ccTLD, is NOT taking over dot COM here in the USA (with localized merchants and business, or anybody).
If you agree me, then it is at least an anomaly to your opinion, which is that ccTLDs are overthrowing dot COMs in their respective countries. It is not experiential here in the US. I’m sure there’re reasons the US could be considered a peculiarity, but I don’t see why it should be an abnormality; I can see why such comparison could be termed an irregularity, but I can’t see any for the inconsistency, if the same standards hold for every country.
I use heuristic approach in my blog inputs. Therefore, I’ll limit my comments to what I observe here, in the US.
Thanks for your indulgence.
I already said that .COM is the de-facto US ccTLD and that it was a special case, Domenclature,
It does not follow that all country level markets are like the US. In the US market, the .COM gained such a critical mass that it made the .US ccTLD largely irrelevant. While .US is the official ccTLD for the US, the .COM is the one that people use and consider to be “their” ccTLD. (Indeed the identification with .COM in the US is very similar to how people in other countries often identify with their local ccTLD.) Perhaps you thought that I was including the US in the set of country level markets where the ccTLD is replacing .COM in terms of local business. However I was not and that may be where some of the confusion arose.
@John McCormac,
Okay, accepted as to the limited area of consistency with what you said earlier; not to it’s accuracy.
@John McCormac,
There’s a discussion I will like to have with you one day. The topic will include “The turning of internet domain names into Derivatives by ICANN, and the stealing of the internet by Google”. I believe it promises to be a good discussion. Let me know if you are interested.
@Domenclature
Perhaps. But just to put the whole numbers thing in some kind of perspective, I am not writing as just a domainer or blogger. The databases here (HosterStats) track million of ccTLD domains in addtion to the 149 million or so main/legacy gTLDs and 1.6 million new gTLDs. This month alone, I have already run individual 110K domain statistical (less than the full TLD domain count but large enough to provide a good view of website usage in a TLD) website usage surveys on seven ccTLDs in addition to a 110K statistical survey on .COM website usage. This gives me a far better understanding of ccTLD web usage and development than most. The databases also group domains by country based on hoster and I’ve run regular full gTLD website IP mapping surveys on COM/NET/ORG/BIZ/INFO/MOBI/ASIA and the tracked ccTLDs and this provides a very good view of the IP and hosting infrastructure in most countries.
Google has been murdering websites in the organic serps for high value keywords. A search for a high value keyword now results in that exercise in plagiarism the Google “knowledge” graph taking up a major section of the screen and the top results being barely disguised Google Adwords links. The top SERP is often a link from Wikipedia (Google plunders that too). The organic results typically only occupy the lower few positions. No wonder Google’s CTR was up due to these practices. But that’s a different topic and has already been discussed on various webmaster fora.
In terms of grouping the new gtld buyers, can we agree on three primary buckets?
1. trademark owners
2. speculators
3. end-users
We can argue how these breakdown. But at this level, what is the breakdown for the new gtlds?
Verisign is a rogue to go rouge.
I reviewed the Verisign call from yesterday and didn’t find anything offensive or “rouge” about it.
They simply compared the total base of new TLD registrations to an existing zone.
As for .net, they were responding to a question on softness in .net zone growth. They explained that .net might be more in competition with new TLDs than .com. They view .com as a better domain than new TLDs (as many people do) but that new TLDs are a fair alternative to .net, so from a competitive positioning it competes more with them.
As for “domain speculator”, does it really matter? The people on the call, analysts, are asking about domain investors, or domainers, or whatever you want to call it. They want to know how many domains are registered to be used vs. resold.
I personally think you’re making much ado about nothing 🙂
Andrew
I wrote the piece after listening to the earnings call, as you know sometime sounds a different way that it reads
Verisign continued bash the new gTLD’s on the basis that is was full of speculators and therefore not meaningful which I thought was a pretty silly comment coming from a company that has banked billions of dollars from the same type of registrations in .com, faceboook.com anyone?
I loved the question that followed from an analyst to the effect ” of all .com registrations some 17% are speculators right?
Verisign has grossed billions from speculators and typo squatters, i don’t think they should have played the new gTLD registrations are all about speculators card
Its not a huge “news” story but I hate when the King tells its subjects they are being used by a “speculator” group and not meant in a flattering manner, when they have been doing the same for almost 20 years
I understand your viewpoint. It’s Verisign’s job to downplay new TLDs, of course. And I think they’re right. Most registrations are from “speculators”…not using that term in a negative light.
How about doing a poll?
assuming 17% of .com registrations are from speculators, what is the percentage of speculators among new gtlds registrations?
I’d say 75% or more.
Depends on how you define “speculator”. A registrant who buys a domain to flip at a higher price could be a speculator but a registrant who buys a domain, develops and then sells the domain and site is not. Perhaps it would be safer to use a volume metric combined with a keywords list to identify speculative patterns.