It was just on December 16th that we reported that the number of .Com domain names in the Domain Name Base as reported by Verisign had dropped below 128 Million.
As of today the number of .Com domain names in the Domain Name Base as reported by Verisign who operates the .Com registry has dropped by another million domains to under 127 Million.
In late 2015 the Chinese domain market was on fire and people were registering numeric .com domain names up to 10 digits as well as random letter domain names, now that those domain names have been coming up for renewal for the 1st time many are dropping.
If you forgot how many .com domain names were being registered back in the 4th quarter of 2015 we have reprinted some of our blog post from November 19th 2015:
“”On October 27, 2015, three weeks ago, the .com zone file topped 120 Million for the first time and had 120,034,068 domain names.
So we are looking at an increase of almost 3.2 million new .com domain names since October 27th, three weeks ago.”
Consider that Verisign reported in this last Domain Industry Brief for second quarter of 2015 there were “296 million domain name registrations across all top-level domains (TLDs), an increase of 2.2 million domain names, or 0.8 percent over the first quarter of 2015.”
So to be clear the there has been more domain names registered in .Com in just the last three weeks than were registered in every domain extension worldwide, including .com, including all Top Level Domains as well as all ccTLD’s and new gTLD’s. in the 2nd quarter of 2015.
According to that same report for the 2nd Quarter; As of June 30, 2015, “the base of registered names in .com equaled 118.5 million names”.
So the number of .Com domain names increased since June 30, 2015, until three weeks ago on October 27th, by 1.5 million domains.
In the last three weeks 3.2 Million new .Com Domains were registered, more than twice the number that were registered in the 16 weeks leading up to October 27th.”
Millions of 5L jibberish is dropping and millions of numerous based on Chinese hype across the world of domains.
Domains that were set to go from reg fee to $xxx, now can’t achieve even $1, call it a bag of chips, and then some.
Chinese gamed The system, and these are all the bag holders dropping their losses.
We had domain bloggers attempting to sell .ws domains as investment grade.
Glad people are taking a reality check in 2016.
Long life to new gTLDs 😉
Ahahaha. Hahahahahaha. Ahaha. Ahahahahahaha. Hahahahahah. Ahhhahahahahahah. Ahhhhh. No.
There will always be a strong market for .com, but new gtld’s are the future.
How long before VeriSign flex their considerable muscle, there is consolidation in this sector.
So VeriSign are just biding their time at the moment? Presumably they don’t want to get overwhelmed counting all that new gTLD cash that will flow their way when they get around to pulling the trigger.
LOLz.
I would say VeriSign are ‘Kicking the can down the road’
They had a monopoly,to maintain market share they will have to buy, unless the new domains fail.
ICANN restrictions prevented them participating in the new gtld auctions.
This has nothing to do with GTLDs, they are facing the same fate with Chinese buying .wine, and other stupid mixing of chips, and numerics into unfitting extensions.
@Rich
This probably has everything to do with gTLDs.
As I’ve said before, use the analogy of the financial markets when evaluating (today’s) domain name marketplace. Capital flows to investments that present the best (future) opportunities for alpha returns.
Certain mutual funds or ETFs can only, by charter, allocate their funds into certain investments – so they load up on those. If/when their charter allows them to expand the number & types of investments they can put cash into, the previously-untapped securities benefit from those moneys – and the legacy investments shrink in terms of market cap. It’s basic portfolio rotation, which is exactly what’s happening to dot-COM.
Dot-COM will continue to be the ‘Google’ or ‘Amazon’ of the domain investing space, but investors are starting to allocate some of their investment $/yen/Euro/RMB into more speculative investments, which have much higher risk/reward potential.
IMO, what’s we’re seeing – and will continue to see – is that domain investors (…not end-users) are having second thoughts about investing 5-figures or 6-figures into a quality dot-COM; because for those same moneys they could easily buy an entire basket of superb gTLDs – and have confidence that, over time, 1, 2, …or 10 of those investments will be a home run.
What are you talking about?
5letter 6 letters
6,7,8,9, even 10 numbers with 888 etc
Dot coms were registered by the masses, people would run lists, cut, and paste them, and they would be gone.
This was done as people did. It understand what the Chinese were doing, and thinking when it came
To the domain market.
They felt the spillover would continue, well in March 2016 that dream collapsed, and those domains as they continue to head into expiry became worthless, as the Chinese hype machine was over, and the spillover was not going to occur.
Thoe bets much like options instead of being rolled over, are being surrendered as worthless.
GTLDs have lots to overcome, I still don’t understand why sundkdkd.cars cost $2K to register.
Clearly you have no clue what you are talking about, cause, and effect.
You are quoting etfs, google, Amazon it has notning to do with that.
This is the inner workings, of why this has happend, many called it a year ago, and today they were right.
Many 6Ns were sold into the low hundreds, along with 5L that were sold in bulk for $20-$40, but then the bottom fell out, as did Chinese buyers.
@Rich
Man, you’ve convinced me – how irrelevant my analysis was here. I’ll consider keeping my opinions to myself, now that you’ve helped me see the light.
btw, those online English lessons you’re taking are having a phenomenal impact on your writing skills.
I think it’s a combination of the hype we all saw last year from the Chinese and second it is the new G’s that came out.
I have 4 times as much .com as new gTLD’s and i get mach more inquiries/sales on the new G’s then .com.
Why?
Very simple.My new G’s are better quality then my .com’s
Remember that the gTLD life-cycle is effectively three months long. Some of what is deleting now is from October/November 2015. There are also Chinese bubbles in a number of other legacy gTLDs and new gTLDs. These will not start to burst until January 2017 onwards. In terms of net growth, .COM is back to approximately April 2016 levels and the Chinese bubble drops have effective wiped out eight months of net growth in the .COM zone.
The three months renewal deletion window can vary from registrar to registrar. Some of the registrars give the full grace period to registrants allowing them a few weeks to renew. Others pull the domain names from the zone quickly. The larger .COM figure quoted on the Verisign page in the article includes domain names that have no nameservers and domain names that are out of the zone file. The zone count is the lower figure. The .COM TLD is a very diversified TLD in terms of registrations being spread over most countries rather than concentrated in a small number of countries. The real problem is where Chinese bubble registrations make up a significant percentage of the TLD’s registrations. These domain names have a higher drop probability than ordinary registrations and throughout the first and second quarter of 2017, some of these TLDs will take a hit that could see their figures dropping back to 2015 levels unless the registries consider more heavy discounting promotions.
who cares 1 milion dropped thats not even 1%, as registrations are still growing year after year so!?
.com is king and always be!!
domainincite.com/21314-xyz-club-and-vip-get-the-nod-to-sell-in-china
Only three new gtlds have MIIT approval to fully operate in China.
This has a lot further to run…..
Interesting times ahead ……
.com or .notcom
I cannot help but feel sorry for those “investors” who were led to believe by unscrupulous advisors that they should put their money into domains without having any idea about the market instead of investing in some more real assets.
Probably the same people that got burned investing in Chinese stocks earlier just got burned again. Bye-bye, life savings. Someone made out big here…
The 5 new extensions .Vip, .Club, .XYZ, .SHOP, .SITE got government approval from China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
Approval means that owners of these domain names within China can now apply for the relevant local license to allow their domains to be hosted in the country.
Previously to these 5 extensions, only Verisign (.COM, .NET) had been awarded approval as a non-Chinese registry.
Chinese investors are starting to allocate some of their investment into new gTLD now.
Anyone that thinks this has anything to with new gtlds is seriously stupid. It’s okay to like new gtlds, but if you think s this has anything to them you are seriously stupid.
It has everything to do with new gtlds
Coreile Letter by Kassey Lee
December 31, 2016 (Sat)
I recently read a blog post by a Chinese business executive who went and lived his dream in Beijing for many years, only to discover the very undesirable side of this great city: traffic jam, long working hours, high cost of living, air pollution, and many more. Well, this is the truth about life; you always get both the good as well as the bad in every matter. I have lived in several big cities in the world, enjoyed the materialistic part of them, and then finally chosen to move to the sail city where we now have clean air, beautiful beaches, and green parks. Here’s the post.
NewG talk #19
The big news in this past week was the approval of .site and .shop by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT). The MIIT accreditation means that owner of a .site or .shop domain name can apply for an ICP (Internet Content Provider) license so that its website can be hosted in China legally.
For those who are not familiar, if most of your customers are located in China, you need to host your website locally for performance and accessibility reasons caused by the Great Firewall set up by the Chinese government. Now that both .site and .shop have been approved, genuine demand for them can arise from corporate China.
In a sense, MIIT-approved NewG extensions are more valuable than those otherwise, because the former is supported by real demand from end users; the latter must rely on domain speculators only.
Rank Ext Dec 10 Dec 17 Dec 24 Dec 31 China
1 xyz 6202 6110 6084 6044 63.7%
2 top 4595 4441 4312 4318 78.6%
3 win 1170 1173 1142 1110 91.1%
4 wang 944 926 909 866 99.7%
5 loan 549 619 816 852 95.8%
6 club 832 838 838 830 63.5%
7 bid 585 588 588 590 84.2%
8 site 540 549 559 573 82.7%
9 online 508 521 531 540 30.5%
10 vip 501 505 510 512 96.1%
– TOTAL 16233k 16288k 16270k 16425k na
Note
Unit in 1,000
Data courtesy of Namestat.org
The Chinese Story has only just started & as stats suggest they have a large appetite for not com.
Again it has NOTHING to do with the dropping .com’s. Dot site and .shop got approved, so what? Has NOTHING to do with the dropping .com’s. . There is exactly ONE REASON all those .com’s dropped. Chinese investors realized they made A VERY BAD INVESTMENT. They would have dropped ALL OF THOSE .COM’s , NO MATTER WHAT . Verisign has been saying since last year in the earnings call THEY WOULD NOT BE RENEWED. Everyone already knew they would not be renewed, except you I guess.