discuss .Net and .Info registrations struggling

garptrader · Aug 4, 2018

Per Hosterstats.com the total number of registrations for .Net and .Info have been as follows (millions)....

JUL 2018 13.9 & 5.4
JUL 2017 14.9 & 5.9
JUL 2016 15.6 & 5.5
JUL 2015 14.9 & 5.1
JUL 2014 15.2 & 5.7
JUL 2013. 15.1 & 6.5
JUL 2012 14.7 & 7.8

garptrader · Aug 4, 2018

.Net an extension around for thirty years down 1 million registrations in the last year

.Info which lost quite a bit of strength as new TLDs were released, picked up some during the Chinese bubble which is now fading

Hosterstats shows .Com at 134 million registrations in July 2018 an all-time high

Bullock · Aug 4, 2018

I like .net as a second choice, but I've never considered .info a strong extension

garptrader · Aug 4, 2018

If one compares .Info to some of the more popular new extensions .top, .xyz, .online, .club then.Info IMO is clearly a better choice. However .Info is very difficult to sell despite being around for more than fifteen years. I think I have about three .Info domains one which is a developed South Florida geo.

garptrader · Aug 4, 2018

Here is a good question for a survey...

When was the last time you queried expiring .Net drops? It has been at least a few years.

garptrader · Aug 4, 2018

per Namebio even lowly .Info with a mere 5.4 million registrations has had 98 sales this year and it appears none are registry sales.

.xyz shows 16 sales for the year through July.

Meanwhile .club shows 37 sales many which are registry sales.

Another popular new extension .online shows a whopping seven sales in seven months.

.TV which has fewer registrations than either .club, .online and far fewer regs than .xyz shows 129 sales

Bob Hawkes · Aug 4, 2018

Agree that .net and .info are struggling in sales, especially .info I would say, but also agree with @garptrader that they still have significantly more market share and significant sales than almost all of the ngTLDs at this time.

The .info extension actually peaked in web use in 2011 at about 2.0%. It is currently at 0.9% use. You can look at many TLDs back to 2010 at this link.

https://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/top_level_domain/ms/y

For .net it was highest in the first year shown in the data table, 2010, when it had 6.8% use but now down to 3.9%. It is interesting that the decline of both .net and .info preceded the introduction of the ngTLDs. They may have worsened the situation, but did not start the decline in either extension.

The one major global extension that is doing well over the 8 year period is .org, which went from 4.6% in 2010 to 5.1% currently. And it really is not just the last year or so of crypto, as .org has increased fairly consistently.

For reference, .com is hugely dominant although it is losing share of use. In 2010 it accounted for 53.9% and now it is 46.5%.

The one extension that seemed directly impacted by the ngTLD was .biz, that started dropping the year of the first big ngTLD introductions and has continue to drop.

Even the highest of the ngTLDs are way down the list, with .xyz having about 0.2% of use (so a factor of 4 or 5 less than .info). The trend of .xyz is largely constant. Other extensions including .club, .top, .top, .win and .download make the list but are all near 0.1% use. Some are showing modest upward trend but to precision posted hard to decide if it is statistically significant.

At current trends, I project that by the year 2270 .com and .xyz will have equal use . Us ngTLD investors better take a long term view or find a profitable niche!

Have a nice day, everyone!

garptrader · Aug 4, 2018

MetBob said:
Agree that .net and .info are struggling in sales, especially .info I would say, but also agree that they still have significantly more market share and significant sales than almost all of the ngTLDs at this time.

The .info extension actually peaked in web use in 2011 at about 2.0%. It is currently at 0.9% use. You can look at many TLDs back to 2010 at this link.

https://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/top_level_domain/ms/y

For .net it was highest in the first year shown in the data table, 2010, when it had 6.8% use but now down to 3.9%.

For reference, .com is hugely dominant although it is losing share of use. In 2010 it accounted for 53.9% and now it is 46.5%.

Even the highest of the ngTLDs are way down the list, with .xyz having about 0.2% Other extensions including .club, .top, .top, .win and .download make the list but are all near 0.1% use.

Metbob, interesting chart though I guess the question might be how does one define use? Does an EFTY lander count? A SEDO parked page which states this domain may be for sale? In either case .ORG does seem to be a strong second choice. I only have 2-3 .ORG domains at the moment but my sales turnover for the small number I have held has been high - even more so than .COM.

alcy · Aug 4, 2018

its more interesting to look at sales.. which is all that matters anyway.

Kate · Aug 4, 2018

garptrader said:
Here is a good question for a survey...

When was the last time you queried expiring .Net drops? It has been at least a few years.

Me

I still like them and I use .net for some projects. I usually don't buy them for resale, but they can sell if you buy the right stuff. Some good names are overlooked because domainers think .net is not worth anything.
To be clear, I do not advise .net for investment purposes. Or just a very little bit for diversification.

In the minds of people, I think .net is associated with old websites (which is not a bad thing imho: old websites carry history and authority).
The growth is in .com and ccTLDs, alt TLDs struggle. I think it's as simple as that. While .net is established it's always been an alt (or fallback) extension.

.info is OK, it has a clear purpose but it's always been a cheap and cheapened extension. Selling .info is a challenge as well. I have done well with geodomains which probably are the best suited for this TLD.

Bob Hawkes · Aug 4, 2018

To answer your question @garptrader here is briefly how they do the stats at W3Techs.com:

They start with Alexa 10 M (note up until 2013 they used 1M which may influence long term studies)
They discount all traffic redirected from one site to another - i.e. if you have for example many domains pointing to Undeveloped landers they do NOT count as stats for Undeveloped or for you, even if you somehow had enough traffic to otherwise make the 10M list.
In the case of subdomains they add them all into one total number. i.e. all blogger sites would be added and that would count as one website, with a lot of traffic.
They update their data daily, but the reported is a 3 month moving average. Therefore the data reported today to some degree reflects where it was about 1.5 months ago.
They actually visit each site on the Alexa list, looking at what content is there, including what type of server, technology, etc. I think that (and the redirect treatment) get around some of the criticisms of the Alexa list. It is a starting point for their analysis but not blindly used.

I think I have covered the main points but you can see their complete methodology here. People who know this more, please correct if I have misrepresented anything. I know that there are critics of the Alexa data in general, but it is widely used and when further corrected in this way, seems to be a reasonable look at what is really being used in significant websites on the web.

https://w3techs.com/technologies

ps I recomputed and I think it will be 2290 before com falls to levels equal to the better ngTLDs! Long time! The projection is just for fun as you can't extrapolate that far!!

Bob Hawkes · Aug 4, 2018

By the way I wrote the above up, with some links and caveats and explanations etc., into a blog post in case you want to read it there. I have included some graphs, and added .io into the mix as well.

Thanks for reading. Let me know of any corrections you spot, or things you think need more explanation.

https://agreatnameforyou.blogspot.com/2018/08/which-extensions-are-growing-in-actual.html

korganian · Aug 4, 2018

MetBob said:
Agree that .net and .info are struggling in sales, especially .info I would say, but also agree with @garptrader that they still have significantly more market share and significant sales than almost all of the ngTLDs at this time.

The .info extension actually peaked in web use in 2011 at about 2.0%. It is currently at 0.9% use. You can look at many TLDs back to 2010 at this link.

https://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/top_level_domain/ms/y

For .net it was highest in the first year shown in the data table, 2010, when it had 6.8% use but now down to 3.9%. It is interesting that the decline of both .net and .info preceded the introduction of the ngTLDs. They may have worsened the situation, but did not start the decline in either extension.

The one major global extension that is doing well over the 8 year period is .org, which went from 4.6% in 2010 to 5.1% currently. And it really is not just the last year or so of crypto, as .org has increased fairly consistently.

For reference, .com is hugely dominant although it is losing share of use. In 2010 it accounted for 53.9% and now it is 46.5%.

The one extension that seemed directly impacted by the ngTLD was .biz, that started dropping the year of the first big ngTLD introductions and has continue to drop.

Even the highest of the ngTLDs are way down the list, with .xyz having about 0.2% of use (so a factor of 4 or 5 less than .info). The trend of .xyz is largely constant. Other extensions including .club, .top, .top, .win and .download make the list but are all near 0.1% use. Some are showing modest upward trend but to precision posted hard to decide if it is statistically significant.

At current trends, I project that by the year 2270 .com and .xyz will have equal use . Us ngTLD investors better take a long term view or find a profitable niche!

Have a nice day, everyone!

When you state "For reference, .com is hugely dominant although it is losing share of use. In 2010 it accounted for 53.9% and now it is 46.5%." Do you mean "use" or "registrations"?

The percentage stats I am interested in following is for developed domains. I am much more interested in what end users are buying and developing vs what domain investors are registering with coupon codes for 99 cents.

Bob Hawkes · Aug 4, 2018

korganian said:
When you state "For reference, .com is hugely dominant although it is losing share of use. In 2010 it accounted for 53.9% and now it is 46.5%." Do you mean "use" or "registrations"?

The percentage stats I am interested in following is for developed domains. I am much more interested in what end users are buying and developing vs what domain investors are registering with coupon codes for 99 cents.

I mean use in top 10 M websites. So not simply used as in not parked but actually used in a website with significant traffic. I.e. I did mean use when I used that word. So as I interpret your statement, these ARE the type of stats of interest to you. Thanks for question.

garptrader · Aug 4, 2018

I realize newbies do not realize this yet but I believe it is common that every few years a domain portfolio will see some transformation. My first year I had a lot of .biz and hyphenated e-names. As I started to drop those I began to acquire a lot of .Net domains. I believe I am down to about 60 or so .Net domains now. Then I discovered .TV and despite the logic of video content the renewal costs and low sales turn made me realize I needed to slash my .TV holdings as well. I was not going to be a sucker for all these new extensions with early access fees and premium renewals and questionable registry sales etc and virtually no aftermarket. I actually have fewer domains now than since any point in the last ten years. Regardless what the domain market looks like fifty years from now I won't be around to see it so what counts for cash flow is where will the demand be over the next several years.

campout · Aug 5, 2018

It doesn't help that .net raised prices earlier this year.

Verisign (VRSN) announced yesterday that it is increasing the price of .net domain names by 10% on February 1, 2018. The wholesale price of a one-year registration or renewal will jump from $8.20 to $9.02 on that day.

https://domainnamewire.com/2017/07/28/verisign-net/

Kate · Aug 5, 2018

It's true but in practice registrars tend to align prices across legacy TLD eg .com/.net/.org/.biz
The end user pricing, not to mention the promos, coupons etc does not always reflect the actual registry fees. So I am not sure how much of a factor it is.

dennisok · Aug 7, 2018

I have this webcap.net overtime now

sharjeep · Aug 10, 2018

Sedo is running some type of 3L.info auction right now. I think it runs until 8/16 (can't remember; deleted the email). Probably a lot of early investors finally dumping their inventory, but I'm sort of curious how much attention these 3Ls will attract.

FlipperC · Aug 11, 2018

Some good advice from @MetBob and @garptrader in this thread.

jmcc · Aug 13, 2018

MetBob said:
Agree that .net and .info are struggling in sales, especially .info I would say, but also agree with @garptrader that they still have significantly more market share and significant sales than almost all of the ngTLDs at this time.

The .info extension actually peaked in web use in 2011 at about 2.0%. It is currently at 0.9% use. You can look at many TLDs back to 2010 at this link.

https://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/top_level_domain/ms/y

That link and those numbers are not reliable. (The methodology seems to be complete rubbish.) Some of the non-core gTLDs have used China discounting to drive registration volume.

As for the stats on .UK and .IE, they are seriously screwed up. The ccTLDs tend to have a higher usage than gTLDs because their markets are so concentrated and uniform. (Most business is local.)

By usage, people in the industry generally mean the percentage of websites in a TLD that are developed and in use. The other metrics are the non-content site percentage and the numbers on redirects.

jmcc · Aug 13, 2018

Kate said:
It's true but in practice registrars tend to align prices across legacy TLD eg .com/.net/.org/.biz
The end user pricing, not to mention the promos, coupons etc does not always reflect the actual registry fees. So I am not sure how much of a factor it is.

Discounting is a serious factor, Kate,
Some of the non-core gTLDs like .BIZ and .INFO have used it to grow their registrations but they've created boom and bust cycles with the majority of the discounted registrations dropping at renewal time. The .NET seems to have used some discounting/coupons to drive registrations. The two most solid non-core gTLDs are .ORG and .MOBI. The suprising thing about .MOBI is that it has strong renewals. The .ORG hasn't used high levels of discounting and is still a high quality gTLD. The .INFO gTLD effectively invented the discounting boom and bust cycle in the gTLDs.

Bob Hawkes · Aug 13, 2018

jmcc said:
That link and those numbers are not reliable. (The methodology seems to be complete rubbish.) Some of the non-core gTLDs have used China discounting to drive registration volume.

As for the stats on .UK and .IE, they are seriously screwed up. The ccTLDs tend to have a higher usage than gTLDs because their markets are so concentrated and uniform. (Most business is local.)

By usage, people in the industry generally mean the percentage of websites in a TLD that are developed and in use. The other metrics are the non-content site percentage and the numbers on redirects.

With respect, @jmcc, the first (and last) lines of your post seems to indicate that you missed what the post and the associated site is about. Neither are talking at all about registration numbers, so discounted Asian, or elsewhere, registrations have nothing to do with it... the post is talking about web use stats. Admittedly the OP title of the thread might lead to confusion on this point, though. Regarding your last sentence, as has been discussed earlier in the post, the W3Techs methodology excludes data from redirects.

While you are certainly free to disagree with the data on web use provided by W3Techs, I think that it is both unhelpful and unfair to them when you say without any specific suppport "those numbers are not reliable. (The methodology seems to be complete rubbish)." If you look earlier in the thread the methodology was described that they use, and a link provided re details. A discussion of that methodology is certainly in order, but to simply use such strong words generally seems, to me at least, unfair to an organization not part of the discussion.

I looked at various possible options when seeking data regarding web use. It is much easier to get registration data than it is to get broad, long term web use data. I selected the W3Techs site as the data source for the following reasons:

It had statistics broken down by extension so comparative studies are possible.
The data available covers an extended period so long term trends could be studied (W3Techs provide data I used since 2010)
Ideally I preferred sites that used a rolling average rather than snapshot approach, as W3Techs do in their methodology.
It was freely available so others could do similar analysis or check things for themselves.
They openly and clearly outlined their methodology (see link here, also post or earlier in this thread, that outlines their starting point, how handle subdomains and redirects, etc).
The organization providing the data are well established (the parent for W3Techs is Q-Success in Austria, they have been in the tech data business since 2001). While those with an extended record are not per se better, it does mean that any criticisms would have been flagged and responded to in all likelihood.

No one source of any data will be perfect for all purposes. It seemed, and still does seem, to me that the W3Techs site provides data that can inform a discussion of what the more commonly accessed sites on the web use. I am sure, that with different starting points, such as a sampling approach that looked at a random selection of all websites using an extension irrespective of ranking, you could get at least slightly different data. I also don't doubt that regional use could well have different results, since a site could be relatively popular in a small area (like the IE you mention), but if it did not reach the Alexa 10M that was used as a starting point for the W3Techs examination of the website, it would never get counted.

Disclosure: I have no association whatsoever with W3Techs or W-Success (beyond using data they have made freely available) or with any other statistics service.

Bob Hawkes · Aug 13, 2018

PS to above re W3Techs data - I also looked at how used different potential sources were. While I realize that use alone does not necessarily mean the contents have high quality, W3Techs is the 870th most popular site on the web (using VisitRank as information source). This at least gave me confidence that I am far from alone in using their statistics! (as comparators, NameBio that we all love and trust is about 95,000 and the wonderful site NamePros is about 49,000 today, so top 1000 is a lot of use!)

jmcc · Aug 13, 2018

MetBob said:
With respect, @jmcc, the first (and last) lines of your post seems to indicate that you missed what the post and the associated site is about. Neither are talking at all about registration numbers, so discounted Asian, or elsewhere, registrations have nothing to do with it... the post is talking about web use stats. Admittedly the OP title of the thread might lead to confusion on this point, though. Regarding your last sentence, as has been discussed earlier in the post, the W3Techs methodology excludes data from redirects.

Actually Chinese market discounted domains are quite important because it is a speculative market and many of those domain names do not resolve to a working website. This is more apparent in the NGTs. The no website percentage varies from country to country as does web usage. Redirects are also a very useful metric because they can show how a TLD is being used at a country level. Web usage generally reflects the economic state of a country.

I don't consider W3Tech's methodology to be sound because it uses the Alexa data. I don't consider its estimates of usage in various TLDs to be reliable or accurate. Given that most websites will never get into the Alexa set, it is quite misleading on ccTLDs. Unlike the gTLDs and NGTs, the ccTLD registries generally don't provide zone file access. Some ccTLDs, especially the European ones, have a usage %s of over 20% and they dominate their markets to such an extent that the non-core gTLDs are largely just brand protection registrations and the main growth each month is in the local ccTLD rather than .COM.

I looked at various possible options when seeking data regarding web use. It is much easier to get registration data than it is to get broad, long term web use data.

The problem with web usage data is that it is very hard to generate and usage changes over time.

discuss .Net and .Info registrations struggling

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