Domain name market continues to grow
Positive data reported for 2022; .com loses ground
In the period around April, a great deal of new domain name market data came out. Various players published their annual reports, and a number of statistical and research reports were released, describing the market in 2022 and highlighting key trends. Our own Annual Report appeared, of course, while Verisign published its latest Domain Name Industry Brief and German provider InterNetX linked up with trading platform Sedo to produce the annual Global Domain Report.
How big is the global market?
Every year, the question of just how big the global market is has analysts scratching their heads, because not all registrations are verifiable.The 2 reports referenced above contain divergent figures, but general picture is one of a sluggish global market. Verisign report that the number of registrations was much the same as the year before, while InterNetX's data shows a 4 per cent fall. Both agree, however, that the total market volume is roughly 350 million registered domain names, of which the world's biggest TLD, .com, accounts for an almost unchanged 160 million.
ccTLDs' growth based on dubious appeal of free domains
Collectively, country-code domains, of which .nl. is one, grew faster than the total market. Part of the explanation was the strength of the local market (as in .nl's case) and improved market supply (as in the case of .fr (France) and .pt (Portugal)). However, most of the growth was recorded by registries that issue domain names free to anonymous users, as with .tk (Tokelau) and .ga (Gabon). Sadly, that market model makes such domains very attractive not only to the general public, but also to cybercriminals. In the Netherlands, Mali's free .ml domain is particularly problematic, because of its similarity to .nl. The Malian domain is prominent in phishing statistics published by the Anti-Phishing Working Group and others.
Growth of nTLDs
It was a good year for the new gTLDs (nTLDs). As a group, they saw their registration volume grow by more than 10 per cent. Within the segment, the Japanese-operated .shop was a notable high-flyer, with the number of registered domain names going up from 1 to 1.5 million. Although the absolute number of .shop domains remains relatively small, .shop generates significantly more revenue per name than many much bigger domains whose names are issued for free, or at much lower prices.
Quiet year on the secondary market
In its Global Domain Report, InterNetX's trading platform Sedo also looks at domain name sales on the secondary market. While very high price-tag transactions tend to grab the headlines, they are far from representative of the secondary market as a whole. Indeed, for the fifth consecutive year, the median price of a traded domain name remained about €400 once outliers were excluded.
Not many high-value .nl domain names traded
On the secondary market for .nl domain names, there were no spectacular sales in 2022. At least, none that were made public. In 2021, Sedo's list of the top 100 trades included wilhelmus.nl, which fetched €30,000, but no .nl names made the list for 2022. One notable trend was the popularity of domain names incorporating the word 'vakantie' ('holiday'). 'Vakantie' became the second most popular Dutch keyword in traded domain names in 2022, behind only 'gokken' ('bet'). The trend probably reflects the resurgent global demand for travel, as pandemic-related restrictions ended. It's likely that .nl domain names rarely fetch high resale prices because, although .nl is a large domain, very few .nl domain names rank among the world's most popular. When pricing a domain name, traders often refer to the Majestic Million: a list of the million domain names that occur in search results around the world most often. Few .nl names feature in the list.
