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.Com slips at GoDaddy

by — Domain Registrars 8 Comments

Expirations outpaced new registrations at GoDaddy in December.

ICANN has published the latest official data from Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN) about the .com namespace. This registrar-by-registrar report covers December 2018.

Something interesting happened in December: GoDaddy’s .com domains under management (DUMs) dropped. I’ve tracked monthly numbers for a long time and don’t recall this happening in recent history.

The drop isn’t due to a large outbound transfer. In fact, GoDaddy’s net transfer loss was less than 10,000. It’s just that more .com names expired at GoDaddy than it got in new registrations.

Note that this only includes GoDaddy and Wild West Domains. It doesn’t include GoDaddy’s smaller registrars and the ones it picked up in the Host Europe Group acquisition.

Now, to the numbers. Here’s how registrars did in terms of new .com registrations.

1. GoDaddy.com* (NYSE: GDDY) 824,821 (865,438 in November)
2. Xin Net Technology Corporation 207,506 (152,143)
3. Alibaba (HiChina) 169,910 (312,227)
4. Tucows** (NASDAQ:TCX) 155,809 (175,148)
5. NameCheap Inc. 129,114 (157,607)
6. Web.com++ 101,629 (97,702)
7. NameSilo (CSE:URL) 94,849 (130,713)
8. Endurance+ (NASDAQ: EIGI) 91,577 (123,087)
9. Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) 85,799 (88,236)
10. United Internet^ (FRA: UTDI) 60,004 (66,501)

Here’s the leaderboard of the top registrars in terms of total .com registrations as of the end of November 2018.

1. GoDaddy* 49,354,689 (49,370,531 in October)
2. Tucows** 12,583,119 (12,659,835)
3. Endurance+ 7,124,825 (7,179,580)
4. Web.com++ 6,726,237 (6,732,478)
5. Alibaba 6,248,273 (6,192,801)
6. United Internet^ 5,640,149 (5,666,856)
7. Namecheap 4,535,855 (4,515,221)
8. Xin Net Technology Corporation 2,987,431 (2,792,514)
9. Google 2,106,955 (2,057,844)
10. GMO 1,953,479 (1,964,580)

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
^ Includes 1&1, PSI, Cronon, United-Domains, Arsys and world4you

Year in Review: .App domain names

by — Uncategorized 16 Comments

Google’s .App launch brought visibility to new top level domains.

Photo of iPhone screen with apps

It’s been a while since a top level domain name launch caught mainstream attention but Google’s (NASDAQ: GOOGL) launch of .App made waves in 2018.

Perhaps it’s because it is a great string. (Google paid $25 million to acquire rights to the domain.) Perhaps it’s because Google was behind it. Whatever the reason, .app took off.

People registered 7,500 domains during early access. Over 100,000 domains were registered within a day of general availability in May. As of the end of the year, there were over 350,000 registrations.

All of this happened despite two potential roadblocks to registering .app domains. First, there was no heavy discounting. Second, an SSL certificate is required to use a .app domain name.

The SSL is required because .app is on the HSTS preload list. This makes it tricky to park .app domains, but some people came up with solutions to this.

Buying an existing .app domain can be tricky, too. Even before GDPR took effect Google had already obscured Whois records, making it impossible to figure out who owns a .app domain.

Google subsequently launched .page but that domain hasn’t cracked 10,000 registrations.

It will be interesting to see what happens when Google launches .Dev in early 2019.

.Com Winners: Some shakeup in the top 10

by — Domain Registrars 0 Comments

Top 10 registrars juggle places in latest monthly report.

ICANN has published the latest official data from Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN) about the .com registry. This registrar-by-registrar report covers August 2018.

Note that HiChina is now listed as Alibaba in the official reports, so I’ve changed the name on this report.

Here’s how registrars did in terms of new .com registrations. There was a bit of shifting as Endurance had a good month and NameSilo dropped a bit.

1. GoDaddy.com* (NYSE: GDDY) 920,365 (916,032 in July)
2. Alibaba (HiChina) 224,383 (237,296)
3. Tucows** (NASDAQ:TCX) 200,563 (212,279)
4. Endurance+ (NASDAQ: EIGI) 153,130 (127,916)
5. Xin Net Technology Corporation 144,999 (129,492)
6. NameCheap Inc. 139,914 (124,011)
7. Web.com++ 103,022 (93,535)
8. Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) 95,841 (94,033)
9. NameSilo 86,955 (127,451)
10. 1&1 47,333 (not in top 10)

Here’s the leaderboard of the top registrars in terms of total .com registrations as of the end of August 2018. There were no changes, but I suspect that once we see the October or November report, Google will have surpassed GMO.

1. GoDaddy* 48,907,328 (48,659,723 in July)
2. Tucows** 12,816,784 (12,834,441)
3. Endurance+ 7,357,344 (7,411,874)
4. Web.com++ 6,722,545 (6,721,550)
5. Alibaba 5,813,977 (5,683,428)
6. Namecheap 4,354,411 (4,312,430)
7. 1&1 3,701,944 (3,716,477)
8. Xin Net Technology Corporation 2,376,346 (2,260,541)
9. GMO 1,993,491 (2,011,266)
10. Google 1,903,695 (1,840,869)

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