Google Domains finishes 2017 among the top 10 domain name registrars for .com.
Google launched its domain name registrar in the middle of 2014. It grew quickly and is now among the top 10 registrars in the world for .com domain registrations as of the end of last year. It surpassed OVH in the latest official data from Verisign.
The data are from Verisign’s (VRSN) most recent official breakdown of domain transactions by registrar, which concludes December 2017.
There are four main reasons I believe Google Domains has grown so quickly:
1. It got a great ranking on Google for key terms. Go figure.
2. It can spend whatever it wants on Google Adwords. Take money from one pocket and put it in another.
3. Cross marketing between other Google products/services.
4. Brand trust and recognition.
One curious thing about Google Domains is that it only accepts one-year registrations.
In December, these were the top 10 registrars in terms of new .com registrations:
1. GoDaddy.com* 842,032 (897,003 in November)
2. Tucows** 167,285 (187,418)
3. Endurance+ 155,589 (169,207)
4. HiChina Zhicheng Technology Ltd. 125,286 (163,557)
5. NameCheap Inc. 117,990 (152,154)
6. Xin Net Technology Corporation 89,455 (83,992)
7. Web.com++ 88,067 (96,305)
8. Google Inc. 73,704 (77,297)
9. GMO Internet, Inc. dba Onamae.com 48,918 (51,056)
10. 1&1 Internet 42,570 (54,521)
Here’s the current leaderboard of the top registrars in terms of total .com registrations as of the end of December 2017. There were approximately 135 million total .com domains registered as of the end of December.:
1. GoDaddy* 46,830,764 (46,542,942 in November)
2. Tucows** 15,578,732 (15,720,758)
3. Endurance+ 8,006,707 (8,076,223)
4. Web.com++ 6,666,853 (6,666,497)
5. HiChina 5,281,736 (5,290,049)
6. 1&1 3,780,143 (3,804,080)
7. GMO 2,196,043 (2,200,618)
8. Xin Net Technology Corporation 1,653,909 (1,589,452)
9. Namecheap 1,469,175 (1,350,681)
10. Google 1,391,333
Namecheap should leap up the charts next month. Millions of domains were transferred from Enom (Tucows) to Namecheap in January.
Many domain companies have multiple accreditations and I’ve tried to capture the largest ones. See the notes below and let me know if I’ve missed any large registrars.
* Includes GoDaddy and Wild West Domains
** Includes Tucows and Enom
+ Includes PDR, Domain.com, FastDomain and Bigrock. There are other Endurance registrars, but these are the biggest.
++ Includes Network Solutions and Register.com
here’s an idea for them… offer to review and defend bogus udrp suits and they’d be number one in six months.
Providing good service, perhaps ?
It is unfortunate perhaps for all of us especially the small resellers, that a major company like Google gets into the domain business. They can offer three things that no other registrar or reseller can compete with. First their name, that everybody knows, free advertising on top of every first page that has the keyword domain or registration, and low pricing due to limited overhead. They have been stealing other registrars’ domain names since their inception. Many of the domain names under their management have been taken from another registrar, like what Amazon is doing to retail stores. The big losers are domains resellers. My wholesale price is the same as Google’s retail price. How can you compete ?. 40,000 domain names in the hole so far.
I’m surprised that Namesilo isn’t on the list yet. Hopefully they’ll join the list soon!
Google definitely is playing unfairly. As you and other commenters stated, they have an undue advantage which allows them to grow faster than competitors similar to what they did in the shopping niche