Data shows that bulk of domain registrations are not from domainers.
Are domain investors or individual site owners and end users driving most of the .co domain registrations?
I just got some data from the .co registry that suggests it’s the latter.
Registrants with 50 or more .co domain names comprise only 1% of the total registrant base. What’s more, these people only account for about 10% of all domain names registered.
That means people with fewer than 50 .co domains make up 90% of the total registration base.
If you define people with 10 or more domains as “domain investors”, the number goes up slightly. About 2% of .co registrants have 10 or more domains, and the total of their portfolios is about 17.5% of all domains registered. This percentage is dropping every month.
So over 80% of .co registrations are coming from people with fewer than ten .co registrations. Most have just one or two .co domains. I suspect some of the heavily domainer-invested extension are opposite of these numbers for .co.
For the record, I own one .co domain name — DNW.co.
In other interesting .co news, .Co Internet was recently nominated for a World Trademark Review Industry Award.
That is understandble being that Googles algorithms do not rank .co to compete with .com. So I own over 1,000+ domains and none are .co. The closest to .co would be LyricsCo.com
@Karl
“That is understandble being that Googles algorithms do not rank .co to compete with .com”
That’s just a myth and it’s not true at all, here’s the official stance of Google on the matter: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=7592210062d70a5a&hl=en
Sounds like great news for .com owners as the .co domains get developed out the .com equivalent owners will reap big rewards from the “typos”. 🙂
Love it ! More good news for the domain industry.
There are so many people, even in the domain business, still thinking .CO is treated as a ccTLD by Google and so can’t rank well: maybe Andrew and the other bloggers should write a post on the matter to clarify it once and for all.
Joe – I’ve already written about that https://domainnamewire.com/2010/07/22/report-google-to-treat-co-as-international-domain/
@Andrew
Yes, I remember that post but people always ask for an “official” reply from Google itself.
I like your dnw.co
Lucky you ve got it.
I own less than 10 .co and all are LLL.co
Coming soon the renewal for .co, (july) so will see massive drops or not.
Would you mind quoting and/or linking to the source of this information?
@Rob
See post #2.
Sorry. Question was for Andrew. I would like to see the source for the .co stats that Andrew is referring to.
@ Rob – I got them from the registry
@Joe
“… maybe Andrew and the other bloggers should write a post on the matter to clarify it once and for all.”
Google’s handling of .co has been discussed here and elsewhere. The bottom line is that people believe what they want to believe. Hardline .com investors will not give an inch to the .co extension, and .co investors are encouraged by every bit of good news about .co.
You got them from the registry? Does that mean they are from some page http://www.cointernet.co/ or were these numbers sent to you?
Does it give the current number of .co registrations anywhere?
Rob, I asked for the numbers directly. I don’t know of any registry that publicizes this info.
Anyone measuring a domainer as someone with more than 10, 20, or 50 domains has no idea what they are talking about.
No one registers more than 1 or 2 domain names unless they are domainers, especially not in the same extension. The average joe small business may register their business name in a variety of different extensions, but not just one extension. Therefore the 2-10 domain name category is crucial and also consists of domainers. So if you were to put the number to qualify as a “domainer” at more than 2 or 3 names, like the casual domainer getting their feet wet, it would obviously constitute A LOT MORE than 17.5%.
But keep drinking it. The Kool aid, that is.
Domainers don’t own the online world overall, contrary to their belief. They just own alot more domains per capita. And, virtually all of world’s most successful domainers are dotcommers.
Regarding current .CO registrants –my guess is that naive newbies and small timers make up the bulk of the registrants for this new and less than prime online neighborhood. I predict that the domainers who own all but the true premium names will be dropping their hoards. This cycle happens like clockwork for many of the new extensions.
Now, on to the search engines: even if .CO were to be treated just like .COM by Google, surfers don’t know the new extension. And, there is no guarantee that Google’s policy would not change as the confusion possibly intensifies.
Thanks. Can you ask how many .co domains have been registered?
I would think they would be proud to finally announcing the jump in registrations since the Super Bowl ad, no?
Seriously, I am curious to know how many .co domains have been registered.
@ Rob Sequin – they did not. I don’t know how many are registered.
Since it’s a ccTLD they also don’t have to report the #s to ICANN.
@Rob
The registry stated that they will announce when number of registrations hits 1,000,000.
I THINK that the numbers are not true.At one point in time, i had bought 1% of total 1000 domains beeing sold that was one hour after the release on july 20th.But i could be wrong as i dont have access to the registry info.
@ Rich – 1% of total 1000 domains being sold? You mean 100k domains?
@Andrew
“Since it’s a ccTLD they also don’t have to report the #s to ICANN.”
Right. They don’t have to report anything to anybody so there is no way to independently verify what they told you.
Now, forgive me for asking this but did you ask them for this information or did they offer it you?
Understand my concern here?
Rob, if your concern is that they created an intricate lie, I trust the numbers they gave to me. Short of a third party audit, I don’t know any other way to get this sort of data. And even at that, you could put on a conspiracy theory hat and say it was doctored.
Joe,
With regards to ranking a .co a nice article would be to show examples of .co’s that rank for good keywords.
A good .stormtrooper could rank for long tail terms so instead of talking about how Google says they will treat .co’s why not show some examples.
We can all find a quote to find more value in a certain extension but the proof is in the pudding and there isnt but a handful of .co’s ranked out there in any category.
Most of the secondary market for extensions fall on thier ability to rank. Some extensions however are about branding and .co is more along these lines imo
I have only one .co domain, premiumdomains.co.
And only acquired that to support my .us and .biz versions.
Joe, it is great that you have your opinion in disputing the “truth” that I have told.
I looked for your keyword domain with .co on Google and I only found the .com version on the first page. Unfornately your same keyword domain with the .co was not found on the first or second page.
Like I said .Coms take precedence in the Google Serps and that is why I only sell .Coms.
@Karl
My domain name Acapulco.CO is simply parked, while Acapulco.com not only is fully developed but is also a successful business owned by Castello Bros. So please don’t base your opinion on the ranking of a parked domain. As you can read in the link I posted, both extensions are officially given the same weight. All other factors make the difference, but not the TLD. That said, people are free to believe what they want.
No not saying conspiracy just wondering now if they came to you and asked you to post these stats or if you asked for stats and they answered?
The content is obviously the image they want to promote.
If you asked for and received these stats, they should give you something simple like total registrations. no?
Rob – they pitched the trademark award to me, which got me thinking about who was actually buying the domains.
What a dill:
http://www.whois-search.com/whois/domainnamewire.co
@ Nic – yeah, that guy’s just wasting $30/year.
Okay, thanks. Great angle. Glad they worked with you on the stats.
I’ll try to be patient for them to announce the total registration numbers. Not sure why it’s such a big secret.
Either they are close and want to have a big announcement at one million or they are far away from one million and .co will never get to one million registrations.
I don’t think the announcement will ever come.
Either way, July is going to be brutal for renewals.
Rob – they certainly can get more PR value out of releasing milestone news by themselves.
Although I’m surprised they haven’t made any announcements on each subsequent 100k domains.
I agree that stating that domainers on average register 10+ .co domains and not less is just a bias. Probably most of the owners of 3-10 .co domains are domainers, so the real statistics would look much different from the ones presented by the registry.
Why didn’t you invest .co? It’s late for anything you want to do on .co.