Official data from November show some interesting domain movement.
ICANN just published data from Verisign about .com activity in November. This was right in the thick of the anniversary of the “Chinese surge” and the data show it.
GoDaddy has the most expired deletions because it’s the biggest, but check out these huge deletion numbers at Chinese registrars:
22net 339,307
eName 315,143
HiChina 265,138
I imagine these numbers increased in December, but we’ll have to wait a month to find out.
You’ll see below that HiChina also had massive inbound transfers, and conversely, eName and 22net lost a lot. So it appears HiChina picked up some domains from them. Maybe it was an investor buying out other investors?
Now, let’s get to the normal charts that I track each month for .Com Winners & Losers…
Here are the top 5 registrars in November in terms of new .com registrations:
1. GoDaddy* 815,988
2. Rightside** 246,673
3. PublicDomainRegistry 150,972
4. Tucows 128,759
5. HiChina 125,270
Here are the top five registrars (open to the public) for net inbound transfers:
1. HiChina +207,812
2. MAFF +8,193
3. TurnCommerce (NameBright) +7,213
4. Google +6,728
5. OurDomains Ltd +6,185
On the flip side, these five registrars saw the biggest net outflow of .com domain names due to transfers:
1. eName -145,681
2. 22net -54,667
3. Tucows -24,703
4. Web.com*** -8,458
5. GoDaddy -7,125
*Includes GoDaddy and Wild West Domains **This is prior to Tucows’ acquisition of eNom and includes eNom and Name.com *** Includes Network Solutions and Register.com, but not drop catching registrars.
Andrew we have a lot of pinyin..com names and the one that always pops up as we look is HiChina.
Definitely a few big investors moving some things around to HiChina. I haven’t looked to see what the exact niche the domains are, but it’s a common bulk move to try and keep a market locked for value retention.