You still can’t register a domain for more than one year at Google Domains.
ICANN has published the latest official data from Verisign (NASDAQ:VRSN) about the .com registry. This registrar-by-registrar report covers July 2018.
While reviewing the data I was surprised to see something about Google Domains. Even after all of these years and the growing success of its registrar, Google Domains still doesn’t allow initial registrations for more than one year. You can renew domains for multiple years at a time, but all initial registrations are limited to one year.
Registrars love multi-year registrations, so I’m baffled why Google Domains doesn’t offer them.
Anyhow, on to the rankings. Here’s how registrars did in terms of new .com registrations:
1. GoDaddy.com* (NYSE: GDDY) 916,032 (866,819 in June)
2. HiChina Zhicheng Technology Ltd. 237,296 (203,536)
3. Tucows** (NASDAQ:TCX) 212,279 (192,056)
4. Xin Net Technology Corporation 129,492 (132,636)
5. Endurance+ (NASDAQ: EIGI) 127,916 (117,369)
6. NameSilo 127,451 (105,228)
7. NameCheap Inc. 124,011 (117,964)
8. Web.com++ 93,535 (96,339)
9. Google Inc. 94,033 (89,914)
10. West.cn 59,781 (not in top 10)
Here’s the leaderboard of the top registrars in terms of total .com registrations as of the end of July 2018:
1. GoDaddy* 48,659,723 (48,452,314 in June)
2. Tucows** 12,834,441 (12,835,741)
3. Endurance+ 7,411,874 (7,500,686)
4. Web.com++ 6,721,550 (6,737,824)
5. HiChina 5,683,428 (5,527,250)
6. Namecheap 4,312,430 (4,284,760)
7. 1&1 3716477 (3,731,057)
8. Xin Net Technology Corporation 2,260,541 (2,172,780)
9. GMO 2,011,266 (2,035,462)
10. Google 1,840,869 (1,782,920)
Many domain companies have multiple accreditations and I’ve tried to capture the largest ones. See the notes below.
* 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
Should probably also be including HEG/123-reg/Mesh Digital/Paragon into Godaddy’s numbers too!
Fair point…might be time to add some of these
I thought google was 1st
I don’t believe that GoDaddy is honest or moral!!!
I will never check the availability of a name (URL) with GoDaddy ever again.
I can now report I found that GoDaddy seems to be able to intercept and reserve a name in their system. Especially if you don’t go ahead and register the name with them after checking it’s availability.
Recently I registered one name with GoDaddy and then checked the availability of another name.
I decided instead a few minutes later to register that available name with my normal registrar in Australia where I hold several other names.
Ater I had registered it with my Australian registrar, which was accepted, was I then shocked to find afew hours later that my registration had been disallowed. They said it had been reguregist.
So I went back to the GoDaddy site and I was surprised to find that the name was now held by GoDaddy, but available to me.
I could register through GoDaddy, but the price was higher than the previous price of a normal registration.
Clearly it was noted by both sites that it was normally available for registration by me earlier, and prior to this attempted extortion.
I think that not only is such an action immoral and dishonest, but I would imagine it is illegal.
I now refuse to use GoDaddy!
I can guarantee you this is not what happened.
godaddy have good reputation ..but seem likely they added black mark recently …also they have my monthly subscription https://hostingfacts.com/
That could be the case because sometimes there are promotions for some TLDs, offering the significant discount for the first year of . Subsequent renewals are charged at a full price, and due to many possible technical reasons with b2b communication between Google and TLD registrars it could prove almost impossible to implement tje discount if it’s not done as a separate transaction.
Which is the best platform to buy a domain name and can keep private registration for free.
There are lots that offer free privacy, especially now under GDPR.
Who is Xin Tech Technology? I’m not aware or have no idea why my site is being routed to an Asian site. Upon further investigation my domain expired and this site purchased my domain. I tried contacting the company but everything is foreign when I tried to translate the site in English that didn’t help either. Any suggestions?