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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 December 2018.

1. GoDaddy* 49,354,689 (49,370,531 in November)
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

Big news: Enom switches from NameJet to GoDaddy for expired domains

by — Expired Domains 28 Comments

GoDaddy adds coveted Enom inventory to its expired domain name auctions.

Picture of expired parking meter.

Enom has moved its expired domain inventory to GoDaddy Auctions.

GoDaddy Auctions has another domain name registrar on its expired domain platform and this one is a doozy: Enom.

This morning I noticed many Enom domain names flowing through GoDaddy Auctions’ expiry stream.

The move is not surprising. Tucows (NASDAQ: TCX), which acquired Enom in 2017, already sends its non-Enom inventory to GoDaddy. For its Tucows domains, it essentially did a bake-off between GoDaddy Auctions and NameJet to figure out which one produced the most revenue. GoDaddy won.

The Enom acquisition came with a 50% ownership interest in NameJet and Tucows kept Enom’s expired domains on NameJet while sending its other domains to GoDaddy. But Tucows sold its stake in NameJet to Web.com late last year.

At the time of the acquisition I wrote:

The big question is if Enom domains will remain on NameJet and for how long. This was obviously part of the negotiation and ultimate purchase price. If Enom leaves the platform for GoDaddy at some point in the future, it will further degrade NameJet’s role in the marketplace.

We now have the answer.

So is this a win for domain investors? Yes and no.

On the plus side, they no longer have to manage domains at Enom. All domains they win will be added to their GoDaddy accounts.

Also, GoDaddy Auctions start at $12 (plus renewal, so about $20 total) whereas NameJet auctions start at $69.

But auctions at GoDaddy can be quite rich. Domain investors might end up paying more for domains there than if they same names ran through NameJet.

Also, I worry when there aren’t two strong competitors in a market. NameJet is getting weaker. Its valuable inventory is now mostly Web.com’s registrars Network Solutions and Register.com.

Tucows acquires Ascio as consolidation continues

by — Domain Registrars 5 Comments

Tucows acquires another reseller registrar.

Ascio domain name registrar logoTucows (NASDAQ: TCX) has acquired reseller registrar Ascio Technologies from CSC for $29.44 million.

Ascio has 1.8 million domains under management and 500 active resellers. Compared to Enom, which Tucows acquired two years ago, Ascio has fewer but bigger resellers.

By selling Ascio, CSC it focusing on its brand management registrar.

Ascio has a strong presence in Europe with a headquarters in Denmark and office in Germany. It’s also known for carrying lots of country code top level domains, which will help Tucows expand the number of TLDs available.

According to the release, Ascio had approximately $4 million in annual EBITDA. Tucows had already included the Ascio contribution in the latest financial guidance it provided last month.

Tucows says it expects cost synergies in the deal and this makes sense. The company is already rebuilding its platform to run both Enom and OpenSRS, Tucows’ other reseller registrar.

 

New .Com Winners & Losers

by — Domain Registrars 2 Comments

NameSilo jumps on monthly list.

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

The only notable movement was NameSilo, which jumped from #10 to #6 on the monthly report. It’s currently the 11th largest .com registrar. You can read an interview with NameSilo’s CEO here.

Here’s how registrars did in terms of new .com registrations.

1. GoDaddy.com* (NYSE: GDDY) 865,438 (893,103 in October)
2. Alibaba (HiChina) 312,227 (204,213)
3. Tucows** (NASDAQ:TCX) 175,148 (183,542)
4. NameCheap Inc. 157,607 (139,033)
5. Xin Net Technology Corporation 152,143 (135,590)
6. NameSilo (CSE:URL) 130,713 (68,758)
7. Endurance+ (NASDAQ: EIGI) 123,087 (130,915)
8. Web.com++ 97,702 (105,815)
9. Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) 88,236 (92,312)
10. United Internet^ (FRA: UTDI) 66,501 (71,257)

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

1. GoDaddy* 49,370,531 (49,222,603 in October)
2. Tucows** 12,659,835 (12,709,575)
3. Endurance+ 7,179,580 (7,240,990)
4. Web.com++ 6,732,478 (6,730,384)
5. Alibaba 6,192,801 (5,972,559)
6. United Internet^ 5,666,856 (5,675,949)
7. Namecheap 4,515,221 (4,452,551)
8. Xin Net Technology Corporation 2,792,514 (2,639,761)
9. Google 2,057,844 (2,005,816)
10. GMO 1,964,580 (1,975,188)

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

Tucows releases “Tiered Access” Whois request data

by — Domain Registrars 0 Comments

2,100 requests for Whois data so far.

Graph of Tiered Access whois requests at Tucows

Most Whois data requests are related to trademark infringement.

Domain name registrar Tucows (NASDAQ: TCX) released data today about requests for Whois information under its tiered access program.

The company started the program following the implementation of the European Union’s General Data Protection Policy (GDPR) last year. At that time, Tucows masked Whois records for all domain names on its platform.

People could still ask for Whois data through an online platform.

The company, which has over 20 million domains under management, said it has received 2,100 data access requests since starting the tiered access program in May. 65% of the requests came from a single requestor.

While Tucows didn’t name this company in its blog post, it’s certainly AppDetex on behalf of Facebook, which flooded Tucows with requests timed around ICANN meetings.

Overall, Tucows provided data on 25% of requests including for 21% of AppDetex’s requests.

These numbers don’t tell the whole story. Only about 5% of requests were denied; the other 70% of requests weren’t fulfilled because the requestor didn’t respond to Tucows’ request for more information. So the majority of requestors that provided all the information Tucows wanted got data.

90% of requests came from commercial litigation. This includes the AppDetex requests.

Tucows points out that few requests came from security researchers. (That said, I believe most security researchers use Whois data in bulk to connect the dots, so requesting individual records is not feasible.)

The data don’t include ICANN Compliance requests. Tucows has not given personal registration data in response to any of ICANN’s requests but has been able to help ICANN investigations without disclosing this data, it said.