July 2020 Domain Industry Report

We continue to the Monthly Domain Industry Reports with July 2020.

In July 2020, more than 5.1 million domain names were registered all over the world. COM, as always, is the most popular domain extension with 3.4 million domain names (67%).

The number of registered domain names was 4.96 million in June 2020.

Top Keywords of Domain Registrations

The top 10 keywords of domain names registered in July 2020 are shop, online, home, group, life, store, tech, pro, services and best.

The 9 most popular keywords are the same with the previous month. “Best” entered to the list this month. Black was one of the most popular keywords in June because of the Black Lives Matter protests.

* We exclude the stopwords such as the, and, my, of, for, in, to, etc, from the list in all our domain industry reports.

Top Extensions

.COM is the most popular extension in July 2020, as usual, with more than 3.4 million (67%) domain registrations. That means more than 110 thousand .com domain names were registered every day averagely.

You can see all domain extensions and their number of registered domains on Dofo’s Domain Extensions page.

Top Countries

The United States has the most domain registrations, as usual. 1.57 million domain names registered in the US which is 60 thousand more than the previous month. 

The top 7 countries were the same as the last month. Netherland entered the list instead of France in July.

France, Vietnam, Brazil and Spain are the other countries that are not in the top 10 but have more than 30 thousand domain registrations.

* We used the registrant country data of Whois records in the top countries analysis.

** A few of the popular whois privacy services use addresses in Panama so we excluded Panama from the list.

Top Domain Registrars

1.19 million (23.5%) domain names registered in July 2020 were registered with GoDaddy. 64.44% of domain names were registered at the top 10 registrars, above.

Wix is continuing to find a place on the top 10 registrar lists for the last few months. That means more people want to create websites and online businesses recently.

7 of the top 10 domain registrars of July 2020 are also in the all-time top 10 domain registrars.

Expiry Date Statistics

91.2% of the registered domains in July 2020 were registered for one year. 5-year registrations and 10-year registrations are high in comparison to other multiple year registrations. 

This statistic was almost the same in the previous month.

Almost 10% of the registrations of COM, NET, and ORG extensions are made for more than one year. For new gTLDs, we see that the one-year registration rate is higher than 96%. 

(Note: All the data in this report was taken from Dofo. We didn’t include the country code domains in the statistics because of the lack of accuracy.)

Top Domain Sales of July 2020

In July 2020, 101 domain names were sold for more than $10,000 and 11 were sold for more than $50,000. The most expensive sale was prove.com at $175,000. 

8 of the top 10 sales are .com and there is one ccTLD: dance.co. There is also a .net domain sale in the list: arc.net.

We see one 3-letter .com domain name sale (ukg.com) and sixteen 4-letter .com domain sales this month. The number of 4-letter .com domain sales was 8 last month.

Seven domain names that only consist of numbers were sold above $10,000. These are:

• 5555.net – $38,286
• 3723.com – $24,210
• 7350.com – $20,956
• 210.cc – $17,000
• 6000.cc – $16,550
• 33688.com – $11,679
• 4486.com – $10,029

prove.com – $175,000 

Prove.com, the most expensive sale of Jule 2020, was sold for $175,000. 

A New York company called Payfone acquired prove.com and announced a rebrand to Prove.

More than 108 extensions of “prove” are registered and 23 of them are for sale on several domain name marketplaces.

memento.com – $148,000

Memento.com was sold for $148,00 and has not been actively used. 

There are more than 2,700 registered domains that include the “memento” keyword. 152 extensions of “memento” are registered and 18 of them are for sale.

vehicle.com – $121,675 

Vehicle.com was sold for $121,675. 

The domain names is redirected to a for sale landing page on Oxley.com, which is owned by domain investor Brent Oxley.

More than 201 extensions of “vehicle” are registered and 86 of them are for sale on several domain name marketplaces. 

Also, vehicle.club was sold in 2015 for $5,000.

hiphi.com – $99,999

Hiphi.com was sold for $99,999.

The domain name is redirecting to a “coming soon” landing page.

18 extensions of “hiphi” are registered and 3 of them are for sale.

ukg.com – $90,000 

Ukg.com was sold for $90,000.

It seems ukg.com acquired by a corporate company.

90 extensions of “ukg” are registered and 31 of them are for sale.

Some similar domains sold before:

• ukr.com – $177,777
• ubp.com – $70,000
• unp.com – $25,399
• uws.com – $25,000
• ukr.com – $25,000
• uft.com – $23,000

arc.net – $80,000 

Arc.net was sold for $80,000.

It was acquired by The Browser Company, “a software platform that enables users to get a better way of using the internet”. 

353 extensions of “arc” are registered and 81 of them are for sale.

Arc.net is the 5th most expensive sale among 3 letter .net extensions.

The top 3-letter.net domain sales are: 

• diy.net – $200,000
• cdn.net – $185,000
• yes.net – $175,000
• net.net – $100,000

abby.com – $75,000 

Abby.com was sold for $75,000.

The domain name was bought by a virtual receptionist service company, Abby Connect. Now, abby.com is redirecting to abbyconnect.com. It seems this is an Exact-Match Domain Upgrade.

114 extensions of “abby” are registered and 22 of them are for sale on several domain name marketplaces.

angelcity.com – $60,000 

Angelcity.com was sold for $60,000.

The buyer, Angel City, is a new professional US women’s soccer team. They are using weareangelcity.com as their official web address. 

Angelcity.com is redirecting to weareangelcity.com. This is also a domain upgrade.

Angelcity.com was sold before in 2007 for $5,200.

We used Namebio for all the domain sales data in this analysis. It’s a wonderful resource to understand the domain name industry.

What Was the Domain Name Industry Talking About In July 2020?

• eBay Motors + Escrow.com Integration: eBay says using Escrow.com can help keep buyers and sellers safe from fraud.
• The Domain Show: The Domain Show was held online between 23-25 ​​July 2020. Details: https://summit.thedomainshow.com/
• Uniregistry Affiliate Program : Rest in Peace: The Uniregistry Affiliate program, launched in early 2014, expired on July 16th.
• Verisign Has Taken Action Against COVID-related Domains: Verisign is working to combat domain name abuse related to scams that seek to exploit the COVID-19 crisis.
• GoDaddy Files Patent Application for “Recommending Domains from Free Text”: GoDaddy U.S. Patent and Trademark application for “recommending domains from free text”.
• Web.com Scoops up Aussie Domain Business Webcentral for AUS $12.2 Million: Domain name company Web.com is acquiring Webcentral Group for AUS $12.2 million.
• Verisign Gets Blockchain Patent: The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has granted patent to Verisign for “domain name blockchain user addresses”.

Last month, we published a detailed analysis about Unicorn Companies and Their Domain Names.

What do you think will it be in August 2020? Please share your comments below.