VeriSign: 138M Domains Registered, Fresh Registration Hits Record
Latest Domain Name Industry Brief from VeriSign (NASDAQ: VRSN) shows continue growth in domain names.
VeriSign has released its quarterly note on domain names and states there are now 138M registered domains across all top level domains (TLDs) — that’s 31% more than this time last year. The number of registrations in Q2 2007 hit an all time high with 14.5M fresh domain name registrations.
Much of the growth is attributed to .cn, the country code domain (ccTLD) for China. There are roughly 6M .cn domain names registered, out of 50M country code domains registered (counting .de, .uk, etc.) total.
VeriSign estimates that 10% of fresh domain names registered are purchased with the sole intent of being monetizied through domain parking. 23% of domain names are right now parked, although VeriSign defines “parked” as having only one page. Many advanced parked sites have multiple pages and may not be included in that total.
The note did not mention the pending wholesale price increase for .com domains. VeriSign is jacking up prices 7% this October. VeriSign’s take on fresh .com domains will be $6.42. Registrars also pay a $.20 ICANN fee, bringing the cost up to $6.62 per year per domain. If you own a sizable portfolio of domain names, you ought to consider renewing your domains ahead of October.
