Twenty-Five Recent Domain Acquisitions and the Decline of .COMs

 

In this article, we’ll review a few recent acquisitions, but primarily look at the decline of the .COM and what’s causing such a rapid decline.

The following twenty-five Domains have been acquired over the last few months, with a total acquisition tally of $733,800.

 

When it comes to domain names, the .COM zone has pretty much seen it’s better days, the volume of sales recently have been greatly reduced as name availability for businesses that are expanding into online sales expands, this may be due to new arrivals such as .buy or .web. It’s not as easy as it once was for a business to pick up a domain name that was accurate or representative of their company or products. The .COM root zone has become saturated, which means that finding an available domain name can be a daunting task when searching for something relevant or expressive, that isn’t spelled oddly, abbreviated, or a sentence long in length.

For example, VeriSign processed roughly 8.5 million domain name registrations in the second quarter of 2014, although only .42 million of those registrations fit within the .COM domain root zone. The rest naturally went to root zones that consist of other TLDs, like gTLDs and ccTLDs. The .NET gTLD saw an increase in sales last year, however, with the recent relaxation of registration requirements and conforming to free domain name usage including changes in government policies regarding ccTLDs, it should come as no surprise to see a spike in these domain name sales, and the decline in other more saturated markets.

The .COM domain name accounts for about 45% of ALL domain name registrations, which causes availability issues when individuals and businesses are looking to acquire name spaces that suit their needs, forcing them to look at other options. Thus the amount of saturation decreases the value of .COMs and increases the desire for something “more original”.

During the first quarter of 2014, registrations for ccTLDs reached approximately 127 million with Tokelau (.tk), Germany (.de), and the United Kingdom (.uk) being ranked as the largest ccTLD zone sizes. We can expect to see a dramatic increase in Chinese ccTLDs, as internet penetration and e-commerce sectors emerge and expand.

Now, consider the cycle of your domain name, its Root Zone is created, delegated, available for purchase, registered, and renewed. However, with the release of additional gTLDs, even the renewal rates for .COMS has decreased. Why is this? Simply put, the demand for a shift in traditional domain names has taken force and people now want to utilize the option of using these newly released ccTLDs and industry relevant gTLDs.

For consumers, this is great news! However, for companies like VeriSign, their struggles to remain profitable or face evolution to include more TLD offerings, registrations, and renewals are their only hope of revenue growth over the coming years.