25 - 30 million .COM drops annually

[garptrader]

If one searches for "Domain Counts Internet Statistics" a link to the daily drops and registrations for .COM, .Net, .Org, .Info, etc appears. Yesterday 75k .COM domains dropped. I believe I have seen a daily .COM drop figure as high as 90k or so. Yes, total .COM domain registrations have been growing for many years. There are now over 111 million .COM registrations - far more than any other TLD. But think for a moment what 75-90 thousand .COM drops a day translates into (well over 25 million annually). It seems amazing to me that say twenty years after the internet went mainstream (AOL) roughly 25% of the .COM registration base is refreshing annually (not literally because these aren't the same names being dropped and re-registered). OK occasionally a business will cease operations and their name will drop. Some businesses have acquired dozens or hundreds of domains and occasionally will let some drop. But how many of those drops were speculative registrations which the registrant decided to not renew (after realizing that they were of poor quality)?

 

[GoKaizen]

Who's re-registering so many bad domains?

 

[Name Trader]

Wow. It's no wonder I have a headache

 

[myleene]

99% of them are totally worth 0$.

Filters really have to be used well to find the good drops or it's really time-consuming.

 

[ecuadorbusiness]

The only reasons why someone would let a profitable domain expire are:

1) The company or the site ended operations and the owner does not care anymore (he has more important things to think about besides figuring a way to continue getting money out of the domain).

2) Pure ignorance about the value of the domain.

3) The onwner died and took the registry account password with him to the tomb.

Otherwise I do not conceive a reason for someone to let a good domain expire. IMO dropped domains are valuable only to sate the fancy of someone who wants that specific name and no other. I do not waste my time looking for droppings, no one will let expire something good, that is a myth.