.com What is the true number?

[gemstar]

Even though of millions of .com domains are registered how many true domains that make sense are out there?
If all the worthless speculative domains we all see drop out there every day were deleted as if they were never registered. what would be the true number in use or not "registered"? We are all told how the .com is king and I agree that is true. BUT. In reality what is out there that could prove usable?

 

[jmcc]

Even though hundreds of millions of .com domains are registered how many true domains that make sense are out there?

Well .com was at just over 100 million domains yesterday but there are over a hundred million .com domains that would have been deleted and not reregistered.

However what may make sense in English may not make sense in Russian or Chinese.

If all the worthless speculative domains we all see drop out there every day were deleted as if they were never registered. what would be the true number in use or not "registered"?

Again you have the problem of subjectivity - who decides what is worthless and what is not? What conditions distinguish a non-speculative domain from a speculative domain?

We are all told how the .com is king and I agree that is true. BUT. In reality what is out there that could prove usable?

In terms of developed and unique .com websites, I think that number would be under 30 million domains. That excludes PPC parked websites and coming soon/holding page websites.

Regards...jmcc

 

[gemstar]

Yes the hundreds were a mistake lol.
Good post. I agree. What I ment by worthless was the domains registered in
order to monitise for parking purposes that make no sense plus the many spur of the moment registrations for no reason. I think you know what I mean.

 

[jmcc]

The best way to consider PPC parking domains is like a whale sieving seawater for plankton. Since the plankton is very small, the whale has to go through a lot of water to get a decent meal. Many of the PPC domains seem to be based on search terms and websites that people expect to exist (the type-in traffic domains).

With .com, it is used almost everywhere so it has a higher rate of development and usage than other TLDs like .biz gTLD. Each country will have a domain market that has a very strong ccTLD/.com axis which often accounts for over 80% of the domains registered in that country. The smaller TLDs like .net/org/biz/info/mobi/asia will have correspondingly less development. When considered as a single set of websites, some TLDs can have over 30% of their domains PPC parked or on holding pages. There's also an overlap issue where someone with a .com domain may also have the same one in .net or .org. Often these domains are not even set up properly to redirect traffic to the .com main website (or ccTLD website for many countries where the number of ccTLD domains exceeds that of .com (the UK and Germany for example)).

The numbers of domains registered in a TLD is often very different to the number of developed domains. For some TLDs, you could be looking at under 20% development. With some ccTLDs, you could be looking at over 50% development. However that's for websites. A lot of people might just use their domain for a personal e-mail address and it could have no website associated with it or it may appear to be PPC parked. If I had to guess, the Godaddy PPC landing page is actually the most common PPC landing page in the world.

Monetisation of domains with PPC is actually a pretty ruthless business. Often if a domain doesn't cover its renewal fee, it is dropped. So what may appear to be a speculative domain with PPC may actually be generating revenue. But many registrars and web hosters will automatically park unused domains on a PPC. This trend has been growing over the last five years or so. As most domain registrations are highly automated, a new and unused domain will probably go straight to PPC. This is certainly the case with some of the newer TLDs that I've surveyed. Development is expensive and difficult - this is why many domains end up on PPC or holding pages. With some of the larger registrars like Network Solutions, they even have cookiecutter template websites so that domain owners can enter their business contact details for a quick website. But many don't even bother.

Regards...jmcc

 

[gpmgroup]

Very interesting post jmcc, thanks!

The numbers of domains registered in a TLD is often very different to the number of developed domains. For some TLDs, you could be looking at under 20% development.

You mentioned 30% for .com - Do you have the current percentage figure for any of the other gTLDs? .info, .org etc?

 

[newshunter]

the google-serps may be an indication of the usage in different extensions
did a google search (using site:*.<extension>):

.com....7,260,000,000 results

.org........536,000,000 results

.net....... 493,000,000 results

.me........153,000,000 results

.info.........94,300,000 results

.mobi.........6,280,000 results

.co.............5,530,000 results

.name........1,460,000 results

.pro..............536,000 results

.aero............182,000 results

 

[phowell23]

So .com's outnumber humans!