Registrations of domain names seem to be going on at a record pace.
Yesterday saw the number of domain registrations across all Top Level Domain (TLD) names have a net add of over 750,000 domains according to registrarstats.com
“Net Add” mean its the amount of domains registered less the number of domain names deleted.
The gross numbers of domain names registered yesterday were close to 900,000.
These total include all legacy domain names extensions like .com, .net and .org (22 in total) and all new gTLD’s but does not include country code (ccTLD’s).
Now back to why we believe domain name are being registered at a record pace.
As of December 31, 2015 there were 158.7 Million TLD names registered and 10.9 Million New gTLD’s, or a total of 169.6 Million.
As of today according to RegistrarStats.com there are 175.5 Million domain names registered or a gain of 6 million since January 1st, 2016.
Consider that yesterday’s net gain in domain registrations accounts for 1.5% of the total gain in in domain names in 2016. If the same amount of domain names were added every day in 2016, that were added yesterday, there would be 273 Million new domains registered in 2016 which would be significantly more than the 170 Million domain names that were registered over the 30 years that preceded.
That to me is a record pace.
From .Com (Net Add of almost 80,000 domain names) to another legacy domain extension .Pro (Almost 60K added) to many of the new gTLD’s, .Red 153K added; .Bid 152K added; .XYZ 106K added, domain names registrations were on fire yesterday.
Combined with the previous day, where almost 500,000 domain names were registered (Net adds) that makes a net add for a two day period of around 1.2 million domain names.
Here are the domain extensions with the most registrations yesterday on a Net Add basis:
RED 153,363
BID 152,251
XYZ 106,068
WIN 80,751
COM 79,938
PRO 59,867
TOP 22,617
MOBI 16,130
WEBSITE 8,092
CLOUD 8,031
BLUE 7,903
MEN 6,086
WANG 4,549
SITE 4,067
NET 3,646
KIM 3,544
RUN 3,421
ONLINE 3,338
SWISS 2,501
ORG 2,485
BIZ 2,188
LOAN 1,783
LINK 1,694
DATE 1,328
INFO 1,210
what kind of domains are being registered? all numbers? or short letternumber combos?
From my review, many of the recent reg’s have been numerical domains although some are one and two word generic keywords/phrases.
cmac
for the new gTLD extensions you can go to http://registered.today and see for the previous day so for .win for example you can see the domain names at http://registered.today/?tld=win
Thanks for the numbers Mike.
The TLD list at registered.today is not accurate. The site does not include any mention of the .pro TLD
I’ll review further to see what other TLDs are missing.
And then these genius non dot com buyers contact you about domains like LLLLL.ZZZ they buy for a whopping $25- thinking they might be losing A LITTLE traffic to the guy that owns LLLLLZZZ.com. So they offer a whopping $100 for the DOT COM.
How many years later are URLs are still new to so many.
Thanks for the article.
@Brian
Do you not think that dot Brands name(s) space(s) will eventually drive significant traffic away from dot com ?
Why are there so many portfolios being sold ?
as per llll.zzz sort of solicitations, I agree with you, lots of silly registrations but isn’t
silly registration part of a very important a$pect of this industry ?
( i.e.: the lifecycle/learning curve of [new] investors that just-now discovered the name space )
New investors find out about estibot, domaintools, auction houses and their fees .. and isnt that a good thing?
The way I see, it’s good news all around, including dot com obviously.
my .2cents
.com had 80K registrations .pro 60K+ registrations its not all new gTLD’s
Sure Michael-
but a lot of those dot coms are likely variants to the matching dot com they really want which complements the non dot com they bought ?
Must suck for those who were too worried about bashing ngtld instead of taking advantage of it, just like how you missed out on all the other boats., you will miss out FOR THE MOST PART on this. You just gotta face it guys, your laughable long non meaning .coms will continue to lose value as ngtld become more and more widespread.
I missed almost every boat because of my age. But luckily I managed to pick up one of the newer domain names with my last name as a LastName.me. I don’t expect it to be worth much in the future mostly because I don’t plan to sell it since I use it as my email.
The extensions that jump out, as being anomalies:
.RED (over 153 K) — I know Red is a popular color in China (I don’t mean in the pejorative, as in Communist, sense — just the color)
.BID (no idea — makes zero sense why there were over 152 K regs)
.xyz (not really an anomaly, as I’m convinced the CEO could sell just about anything)
.mobi (over 16 K regs) — I let some .mobi domains drop last year that I bought on the secondary market in 2007 at 4 figures each and declined offers of 5 figures each before the .mobi crash — I know, bad decision — but 16 K regs for .mobi ? why?
.win (over 80 K) — don’t get this
.pro (I understand this — as they’ve lowered the prices and restrictions)
all the others — sure.
curious – what registry owns .bid, .red, .win?
@Mike
“Now back to why we believe domain name are being registered at a record pace.”
You never did answer that question but instead gave an idea of how the numbers could evolve if the rate of registrations continues. Allow me to postulate, assuming the current pace is maintained.
How about we consider that the vast majority of these registrations were not made in the hope to sell them at a higher price on a later date but to support an application that requires a huge IP/name/dns address space?
They are using the cheaply available LLL tlds i.e.
RED 153,363
BID 152,251
XYZ 106,068
WIN 80,751
you can also see that
1. ~98% of these registrations were made by a single Chinese registrar i.e. the .LLL is probably meaningless, but nice and short.
2. The vast majority of the domain names registered are meaningless to humans
E.g.
586999.red
587111.red
587222.red
3. Although the corresponding .com is likely already registered they can’t be easily correlated to the recent ntld registrations.
My guess is that all these new registrations are somehow related to location id’s for an IoT (Internet Of Things) or M2M based application which will ultimately require billions of addresses.
I’d like people to start thinking in new directions, as the growth spurt since Valentines day is unprecedented in ntlds.
Groovy
Domain names are mostly to make internet addresses friendly for human users. It would be harder to go to google search if you had to type http;//somenumber.somenumber.somenumber.somenumber.
Or if my email was user@124.168.1.0
The internet of things can use a hard coded ip number instead of a name. If they want to provide for flexibility in changing the location of the server, they can register the absolute least expensive meaningless string of numbers and letters.
“they can register the absolute least expensive meaningless string of numbers and letters.”
My point exactly, that is what is happening.
A big reason for DNS is that IP address’s can change, Domain Names don’t.
Steve, RED also means NETWORK in Spanish.
Maybe you would understand more if you looked up what these words mean in Chinese. Start with pinyin, then look at alternative meaning. Each word can mean many things.
“curious – what registry owns .bid, .red, .win?” FFM own Bid and Win, red is owned by Affilias.
Groovy
could be
what if say something like a bitcoin, which has no intrinsic value, was traded in the form of a domain rather than in the form of a code generated by an algorithm through a block chain?
Or what if the Chinese have made domains names a tradeable commodity they are creating more cheap inventory of trading vehicles
All more likely than an investment for resale purposes 🙂
Groovy
Does it make sense that there are record numbers of domain registrations including TLDs that many domain investors with more than three years of experience in the industry are not as enthusiastic about as the newbies.
Where are the record numbers of end user aftermarket sales? DNJ should be booming with sales reports in all extensions where registrations are experiencing explosive growth. Numerics and two to four-character domains seem to be doing well. From what I see multi-word keyword aftermarket sales are not booming in the current market.
Why the escalation? The Chinese are back from their new year break.
The more pertinent questions is, what is the reason behind an unprecedented escalation?
Groovy
Think someone had predicted this, kind of like a domino effect, people who did well meet family over new years, flash some green, family comes back and gets into domain investment, buying whatever they can get their hands on.
The important question is, will all these regs hold or are we going to come up against a deluge of deletes.
The real reason Groovy-
Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have injected hope into the shrinking middle class – i.e. small business is what buys internet domains – specifically (or eventually in the case of this post) DOT COMS
Bri
I guarantee you that 95% of those registrations were from China. I doubt they know who Bernie Sanders is.
Dude, these 100’s of thousands a day of new gtld’s are not hand registrations, they’re systematic, they’re automatic, they’re greased lightning;-)
Sorry I could help myself after systematic, what I was trying to say is, the current registrations are not mom’n’pop noodle shop, they’re m2m, organised planned and orchestrated but for what is the question?
Groovy
that was @Samit
so groovy-
“the current registrations are not mom’n’pop noodle shop, they’re m2m, organised planned and orchestrated but for what is the question?”
well – here er go again – Its about that time for the Local H song with the lyrics “..they just don’t get it…”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tOq25vBkso
Bri
Cheers Bri,
.wtf?
Based on the band. My earlier conjecture would suggest I’m still right, but there’e always the low hanging fruit thesis to contemplate just in case?
Groovy
P.s. I’m more of a thrash metal man myself, but thanks anyway.
(I hope you deleted my prior post — somehow all the comments got pasted into my comment here)
I recently got back from a trip to Vancouver — one of my favorite cities.
Investors from mainland China have been buying up properties there, and the real estate boom there resembles the one in South Florida, NYC and San Francisco now.
Wealthy Chinese have been sending their children to LA, NYC, Boston, the Bay Area and the most popular, Vancouver, for school and to get fluent in English.
Chinese teens dine at the finest restaurants, drive luxury vehicles, and live in $ multimillion condos. We spoke with 2 elegant young ladies (maybe 20) at a sushi bar; they both were celebrating buying their first cars: one, a brand new Ferrari and another, a brand new Aston Martin. They joked that their parents could not even afford to buy new bicycles 5 years ago.
So what’s my angle: so much money there and why not buy up lots of domains if this is what their “financial advisors” tell them. All of you had the supply: congrats. It’s all about timing and opportunity.
@Leonard Britt
I completely agree with your assessment.
.Mobi crashed and in my opinion, will never recover. But at least the extension had lots of sales on the secondary market, and there were big opportunities for wise investors between 2006-late 2007.
I haven’t seen many high sales from these extensions. What I have seen: great one word and 2 word premium .com names selling for really bargain prices. Why? Too much supply. We just have to accept it. Those who sold whole portfolios or managed to sell great domains to endusers – congrats.
I don’t think domain name prices are crashing because of too much supply. I don’t think the new tld’s are really in competition with dot coms. I think it is the movement of all internet traffic to mobile and apps. People moved very rapidly from web sites and email to facebook, twitter, snapchat, etc.
It is the same earthquake that destroyed yahoo’s value. Yahoo, a premiere web page watched its users move to apps. and its stock market value go to zero (after subtracting out Alibaba). Zero.
Good point scrivener3,
My view is there were “walled gardens” in the very early days of the the pre-web internet, Compuserve, Prodigy and AOL to name a few.The web set everyone free.
Back then there was little to no choice, today there are millions of websites and only one that could realistically come close to a walled/controlling service.
Websites are many but few rely on an APP with no website, Tinder maybe?
Groovy
P.s. I don’t include chat app’s here as they naturally reinvented themselves for mobile with 2 or 3 big winners. ICQ anyone;-)
Delete this too, I didn’t see the explanation until now.
I still agree with Paul Graham, founder of Y Combinator, which has invested and incubated companies that have a total market of approximately $100 Billion.
.COM is for serious players, those who want to build a great company, and signal your greatness with a .com, even if your main product is a mobile app.
As Paul wrote last year:
“If you have a US startup called X and you don’t have x.com, you should probably change your name.
The reason is not just that people can’t find you. For companies with mobile apps, especially, having the right domain name is not as critical as it used to be for getting users. The problem with not having the .com of your name is that it signals weakness. Unless you’re so big that your reputation precedes you, a marginal domain suggests you’re a marginal company. Whereas (as Stripe shows) having x.com signals strength even if it has no relation to what you do.
100% of the top 20 YC companies by valuation have the .com of their name. 94% of the top 50 do. But only 66% of companies in the current batch have the .com of their name. Which suggests there are lessons ahead for most of the rest, one way or another.”
Paul is not an investor in .com domains. Just stating it as he see it. Check the companies he funded: i’m sure you use many of the product of these companies on a daily basis. .COM companies.
No disrespect to anyone including Paul Graham. But exactly to whom does it show weakness if you are not on a .com? It almost makes it sound like the Internet was invented only for the strong and financially able few who succeed on a massive scale or have the ability to procure a highly sought after generic .com
Or maybe when soliciting millions of dollars from angel investors the strong people frown on your abc.xyz
If you are one of the weak ones I have good news. You do not need a .com to rank. I dispelled that myth 7 years ago. If you are a new business there are daily advertising models been invented so you can advertise your .pro or .xyz and be in front of thousands of potential new clients looking for your service and not your gtld.
The business times are a changing. 2016 is the year you can get crowd source funding from investors who are not of the “Strong” who want and will help you succeed.
I recommend a memorable generic easy to spell Domain in a gtld that makes sense and build your business. Build it , market it, and they will come. Uniregistry understand this. All small strong or weak business understand this.
This country and the worlds jobs are built on small business. Lets never forget that.
The Internet is for all of us.
Currently (February 21) here’s what I see:
4,976 / 10,074 = 49.4% of .WIN domains begin with a numeral – ranging from gems like 02toa.win to winners such as 9ikvn.win. Lots of 6-digit numerics.
1,890 / 6,293 = 30.0% of .XYZ domains begin with a numeral – ranging from stallions such as 001020.xyz to champions like 9zhan.xyz. Again, lots of 6-digit numerics.
2,222 / 2,870 = 77.4% of .RED domains begin with a numeral – ranging from stallions such as 00118.red to champions like 9vv.red. In this case, more 5-digit numerics than 6.
And so forth. Looking beyond the stuff that begins with a numeral, you’ll see other mixed-character stuff and scads & scads of 4-letter “CHIPs”.
I see a lot of zany theories here in the comments – IOT requiring zillions of arbitrary domains, Bernie Sanders “injecting hope” into the U.S. middle class, nTLDs finally proving that .COM is dead, etc. But where’s the evidence for any of that?
No mystery here, folks. Domains in these TLDs are being sold for less than $1. Looks like a mad rush to speculate on Chinese-style domains. With the Chinese economy tanking and the Chinese domain market stagnant or in decline for the past 2 months where LLLL.com CHIPs and the like are concerned, people are eager to find the “next big thing”. They’re hoping to recreate the magic of the 2015 surge in untried TLDs. In theory, buyouts and buzz will cause prices to rise anywhere, as long as people keep piling on the human pyramid. If 1 area slows down, jump on another.
When prices are $0.50 per domain, a lot of people would rather grab 4,000 “CHIPs” in .RED or .WIN than pay for 1 CHIP in .COM. Why? Because there’s some chance of growth (they think) where prices are rock bottom, and that seems better (they might argue) than putting money in an asset class that has already been declining in value.
A year from now, we might look back on these intensely hopeful bulk registrations as the death throes of the Chinese surge. But that’s only 1 possibility – far more than I know with any surety. This much at least seems clear: These domainers see little growth potential in the more established Chinese domain asset classes; that’s why they’re putting their money elsewhere, hoping lightning will strike twice.
@josephpeterson
I believe you’re spot on with your analysis.
Better to assess via data, rather than speculation or opinion.
@Gus
“Build it , market it, and they will come”
First rule of startups — do not believe this phrase. In fact, it’s a phrase many founders use when they get asked by potential investors (VCs, incubators) when asked how they will get customers.
If the founders say, “after we build it, market it, they will come.”, the chances of funding will be less than 5%.
“Or maybe when soliciting millions of dollars from angel investors the strong people frown on your abc.xyz”
When your company has the largest market cap in the world, you can announce a change in name of the holding company that has just about any extension, while all the main companies/products of this Holding company have the .com extension. Keep in mind abc.xyz is not a site geared to attract customers/users. (It’s a clever marketing move to announce the name of the parent/holding company which makes perfect sense)
The brands should get the appropriate extension: Apple.computer, Apple.car, Apple.cloud, Amazon.cloud, Amazon.shop,… etc
However, if the name of your company, product offering or brand is “Insure Me”, I’d avise getting
Insureme.com and/or Insure.me
and if your marketing budget allows it, get: Insureme.insurance and Insureme.(geos)
I’m not suggesting .COM is the only viable extension.
I own domains in .org, .me,, .co, a few in .pro.
My argument is that the extension must be compatible with the domain;e.g, Sports.cars, Tech.pro, Life.insurance, and even with those solid domains, I’d expect there would be leakage caused by persons going to Sportscars.com, lifeinsurance.com and more
Bottom line: everybody has his/her reasons for expressing opinions. (usually a vested interest in their own portfolios or providing the facts or representing your client or employer)
@ Steve
Well said Steve. I think i was trying to convey the message that I’m not swayed by the remark that anything other than a .com shows weakness. Its inevitable that many of us will have different addresses and most of us will never live in Beverly Hills or have ocean front property.
The reason I used abc.xyz is mostly because large corporations have poured billions in marketing .com and they would never abandon that or change. Well that has changed as well. Certainly it does not mean that big company’s will now flock to new gtlds but it does help the consumer focus to the right of the dot.
Yes dang it .. I own great .pro names! ( disclosure: I have a vested interest in .pro )
@Guy
If you’d like to purchase another super premium .pro, let me know. I’ve had it for 10 years.
The thing is. We all have vested interests. I do, without question.
Thanks
@Steve,
Curious which .pro that is. You’re welcome to email me.