The increase or decrease in the number of domain names registered do not always correlate to the evolution of a product or a trend. Take the example of a B2B product like
business internet. The purchasing decisions for a product as this depend more on the annual budget and business needs. AllStream, one of the leading providers of business internet services offers sports sponsorships to reach out to businesses. Their lead generation trend may thus be centered around their marketing initiatives and not completely determined by media coverage of the industry. However, the growth and movement of domain registrations correlate more to media announcements.
So what do we make of this? If you are a marketer who wants a metric to analyze evolving trends and phenomena, studying domain registrations may not prove effective. As the above examples show, the growth in registrations come after a phenomenon has gone mainstream, and not before it. As a result, using these trends to make your business decisions may not help you be an early-adopter of a trend which is key to making your website an authority on an evolving subject.
