Fresh registrations plummet following Squarespace takes over Google Domains

Unsurprisingly, the strong brand name mattered.

A red arrow inside a red circle, pointing down, on a black background

Squarespace purchased Google Domains on September 8, 2023, and we now have an idea of how notable the Google brand name was to ginning up registrations there.

ICANN has published data from .com registry Verisign showing fresh registrations at each registrar for September.

In August, Google Domains and Squarespace registered a combined 250,324 domains. In September, they registered just 189,713 fresh .com domains.

Google is using Squarespace when people buy some of its products that need a domain and is also sending people to Squarespace when they land on the Google Domains site. (Google Domains still shows up #2 for me in Google when I search for domain names.) Still, it’s clear that the brand name drove a lot of registrations. And these numbers reflect only .com domains, so it’s surely a bigger delta when counting all domains.

The winners? Other registrars that picked up the registrations that would have gone to Google had it still been a domain registrar.

Below is a chart showing how the largest registrars did in terms of fresh registrations in September. Note that the rankings include multiple registrar accreditations within families of registrars. You can see the list at the end of this post. (I started counting Mesh Digital and the five “Go” registrars (e.g., Go China Domains) in GoDaddy’s numbers this month. This added regarding 2k fresh registrations and 530k total registrations.)

1. GoDaddy.com (NYSE: GDDY) 715,431 (775,175 in August 2023)
2. Namecheap Inc. 283,620 (291,747)
4. Newfold Digital 216,538 (169,663)
3. Squarespace (NYSE: SQSP) 189,713 (250,324)
5. Tucows (NASDAQ: TCX) 163,648 (163,629)
6. Gname.com 133,917 (115,409)
7. IONOS 79,420 (99,454)
8. Alibaba 71,895
9. Dynadot 71,212
10. Wix 70,798 (71,825)

Here’s the leaderboard of the top registrars in terms of total .com registrations under management as of the end of September.

1. GoDaddy 56,142,674 (55,638,534 in August 2023)
2. Newfold Digital 12,380,044 (12,370,532)
3. Tucows 11,113,636 (11,131,272)
4. Namecheap 9,387,689 (9,376,275)
5. Squarespace 8,184,335 (8,166,306)
6. TurnCommerce 5,940,486 (5,958,992)
7. IONOS# 5,669,464 (5,659,585)
8. Alibaba 4,187,402 (4,213,654)
9. Gname 4,237,209 (4,155,354)
10. CentralNic 3,826,492 (3,910,648)

Many domain firms have multiple accreditations, and I’ve tried to capture the largest ones. See the notes below.

GoDaddy includes GoDaddy, Wild West Domains, Uniregistry, GoDaddy Corporate Domains, MeshDigital, the 5 “Go Country” registrars, and 123 Reg
Namecheap includes Namecheap and Spaceship
Tucows includes Tucows, Enom, Ascio and EPAG
Newfold Digital Includes PDR, Domain.com, FastDomain, Bigrock, Network Solutions, Register.com, MarkMonitor, SnapNames registrars, and Crazy Domains/Dreamscape. There are other Newfold registrars, but these are the biggest.
Squarespace includes Squarespace and Google
TurnCommerce Includes NameBright and DropCatch registrars
IONOS includes Includes 1&1, PSI, Cronon, United-Domains, Arsys, and world4you
CentralNic includes Key-Systems, 1API, Internet.bs, TLD Registrar Solutions, RegistryGate, Moniker, Instra

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