Why are domain searchers submitting fewer queries?

DomainsBot releases interesting data about domain searches.

DomainsBot, a service that powers many registrars’ domain search, has published some interesting data about user search behavior.

The headline is that people entered fewer search queries per session in May than they did a year ago. Whereas in May 2020, about 20% of users searched just one query, it was about 30% this May. And nearly 60% of people made five or fewer search queries this year, compared to about 40% finishing their search with five or fewer last year.

The number of individual users searching for a domain grew by 37% since last year, but they are entering fewer queries per session.

This begs many questions, and DomainsBot hasn’t answered them yet. But it plans to dig into the data to find out.

The biggest question is if people are finding a satisfactory domain earlier in the process. We need to know how many of these user sessions resulted in a registration. An interesting data point here is that .com availability hasn’t improved since last year. DomainsBot found that 13% of two word search queries were available in .com, and 40% of three word queries were available in .com, similar to May 2020. So are people registering alternative top level domains? Are they registering other domain suggestions in .com? Are they finding aftermarket domains? Are they just giving up?

Right now there are more questions than answers, but stay tuned.

DomainsBot handles domain search for thousands of domain resellers at ResellerClub and Tucows, as well as some of the largest registrars, including the Web.com group, Ionos, One.com, Square and a few dozen others.