The Cliff is Here: Verisign Predicts .com/.net Domain Base to Fall This Quarter

[Acorn Newsbot]

Company forecasts a drop for Q4. Verisign (NYSE: VRSN) expects the total number of .com and .net domain names registered at the end of the fourth quarter to be less than at the beginning of the quarter. In other words, more domain names will be deleted than are registered during the quarter. CEO Jim Bidzos…

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[dee]

Is it a cliff or just a blip ? Out of interest do you think long term that the flood of new extensions will dilute com strength as they settle into their stride ?

 

[Bailey]

What with Godaddys 99p/99c registrations coming round to renewal. I'm not surprised (took a while for Godaddy to amend it to a minimum 2 year registration)

And Dot .NET is the extension facing all the competition from the new extensions - it just doesn't carry its early 2nd choice priority anymore - when you've got all the others out there I wouldn't be surprised if the shrinkage carries on for a few years

 

[ian]

Is it a cliff or just a blip ? Out of interest do you think long term that the flood of new extensions will dilute com strength as they settle into their stride ?

I can't imagine any of these new extensions will ever dilute the .com's, which should remain the daddy until the end of domains as we know it.

 

[dee]

Agreed the com will probably always be king, but once a few generics start to gain rank then I think people will start to feel safe using them. It will take a while granted.

 

[Bailey]

Some of the 'new generic' extensions can look pretty smart on the side of a van or a letterhead and can be quite memorable - Obviously your playing to a completely different market than the search engines and page ranking etc - You'd have to be really into branding. and you'll always have to precede it with www. to identify it as a web address and a Very, very Bold Dot

dot.TV has a good enough history to show some of these extensions (the shorter and trade related ones) may probably do ok

 

[dee]

Some of the 'new generic' extensions can look pretty smart on the side of a van or a letterhead and can be quite memorable - Obviously your playing to a completely different market than the search engines and page ranking etc - You'd have to be really into branding.

Yep. Although how long thats a different market is another thing. Matt cuts addresses it here:

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The main search engine is obviously interested in delivering best search result. Some of the more specific extensions may find a boost eventually i suspect. As long as they don't end up going the spammy info route for example.

 

[Bailey]

Indeed Dee, But, even today all search engines are fairly-well drowning in 'personally built' directory spammy lists etc. (certainly the first couple of pages) . You really need to be typing-in as much of the 'Specifics' to have any chance of finding lets say your choice of restaurant. Bookmarks became the only real savvy 'must do' - after that intial 30 minute hunt. The Smaller enterprises up-to-now have had the choice of going for a' third word in their name or /a minor extension.. If they're fast enough today there's still a chance they can get 'www.tandori.restaurant' or 'www. Amaras.restaurant' at the extensions regular renewal rate.
etc.
I've just picked random examples above

 

[dee]

Absolutely. And i see your point about branding. I think the weighting towards keyword in url has been less and less and its more about content these days ( to a certain extend) I wonder how long it will be if at all someone will just type bass.guitar into the browser if they are looking for a fender precision bass for example.