analysis Stats on the huge number of dropcaught & hand regged domains caught every day

[Chris Co]

Below are the stats for 7 days of expired domains, including the number of names that were dropcatched or hand-regged after expiry.

This came about because of the incredibly high number of domains that get snapped up on a daily basis, which still seems quite unbelievable to me.

It was originally meant for this thread. However, because it got quite a bit lengthy and would have been buried a few pages deep, I thought it deserved its own thread for easier reference.

The links to the relevant expireddomains.net pages have been included below:

.com
628,937 Expired .com
51,627 Caught (7.6%)
28,246 Hand-regged (4.2%)

79,873 Total Taken (11.7%)


TLDs
183,465 Expired .org, .net, .xyz, .io, .ai, .co and .app
7,447 Caught (3.9%)
4,591 Hand-regged (2.4%)

12,038 Total Taken (6.3%)


This means that almost double the number of .com's are being taken after expiry than the most popular TLDs relative to the number of total drops. Plus, almost double the number of people appear to be using dropcatching services rather than manually regging the names when they drop.


A note on the calculations:
Because dropcatched/caught domains get removed from the expired domain list, I have added the number of caught to the number in the expired list to get the total. So for example, .coms on 2025-06-17 the calculations were 84,235 + 6,750 = 90,985. This number was then used to calculate caught & hand regged as a percentage.

To get the hand regged domins, I used the "only available Domains" filter to subtract the number in the expired list with the filter off (84,235 on 2025-06-17) from the number with the filter turned on (81,925).


Individual TLDs
For those who are interested, here are the individual stats for each of the TLDs mentioned above:

42,872 Expired .org
593 Caught (1.4%)
2,215 Hand-regged (5.1%)
2,808 Total Taken (6.5%)

63,938 Expired .net
3,991 Caught (5.9%)
1,270 Hand-regged (1.9%)
5,261 Total Taken (7.7%)

46,447 Expired .xyz
1,196 Caught (2.5%)
482 Hand-regged (1.0%)
1,678 Total Taken (3.5%)

4,809 Expired .io
239 Caught (4.7%)
102 Hand-regged (2.0%)
341 Total Taken (6.8%)

1,696 Expired .ai
92 Caught (5.1%)
144 Hand-regged (8.1%)
236 Total Taken (13.2%)

18,959 Expired .co
1,307 Caught (6.4%)
309 Hand-regged (1.5%)
1,616 Total Taken (8.0%)

4,745 Expired .app
29 Caught (0.6%)
70 Hand-regged (1.5%)
99 Total Taken (2.1%)

 

[Bob Hawkes]

Thanks so much for this and I agree a new thread is best. Thanks for the explanatory notes helpful to those who might want to do something similar for other dates or extensions.

It is interesting to have the data broken down by TLD. I guess not surprising, but interesting to see the very high percentages for .ai. The .co caught figure is higher than I might have guessed.

Am I correct that the hand reg number obtained from available will only be those hand-regged i the first day after drop?

Thanks so much for your contribution @Chris CPD and the professional way it is presented.

-Bob

 

[Chris Co]

Thanks so much for this and I agree a new thread is best. Thanks for the explanatory notes helpful to those who might want to do something similar for other dates or extensions.

It is interesting to have the data broken down by TLD. I guess not surprising, but interesting to see the very high percentages for .ai. The .co caught figure is higher than I might have guessed.

Am I correct that the hand reg number obtained from available will only be those hand-regged i the first day after drop?

Thanks so much for your contribution @Chris CPD and the professional way it is presented.

-Bob

Thanks for the kind words!

I suspect you are right about the hand-regged being for only a day after the drop, but I can't 100% confirm this for sure. I think either expireddomains.net stops updating the statuses of domains a day after the drop, or their updates become a lot less frequent.