May 2020 Domain Industry Report

The last three months were rough times as all nations struggle with the same biological enemy. As we state in April 2020’s Monthly Domain Report, the domain industry still doesn’t seem very much affected by the current situation of the world. Actually, it might be getting stronger. We analyzed all the data we have and prepared May 2020 Domain Industry Report.

In May 2020, more than 4.91 million domain names were registered in the whole world. .COM, as usual, was the most popular domain extension with 3.3 million domain names (67.2%). 

The number of registered domain names in April 2020 was 5.16 million. Last month, 250 thousand fewer domain names were registered. 

Top Keywords of Domain Registrations

The top 10 keywords of domain names registered in May 2020 are shop, online, home, life, group, news, store, tech, now, and pro.

In the past two months, corona was one of the most popular keywords in newly registered domain names. It seems it’s not that popular anymore. 

The other 8 most popular keywords are the same as the previous month. now and pro entered the list from the end. 

*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 May 2020 with more than 3.3 million (67.2%) domain registrations. An average of 105 thousand .com domain names were registered every day. 

The new gTLDs in the list such as .xyz and .club might be registered so many because they offer domain registrations for as low as $1.

You can see all domain extensions and registered domain counts on Dofo’s Domain Extensions page.

Top Countries

The United States has the most domain registrations, as always. 1.59 million domain names registered in the US which is 200 thousand more than the previous month. 

Some countries had a decrease compared to the previous month. For example, China had more than 430 thousand registrations in April 2020, it had 315 thousand registrations in May 2020. 

Spain, Netherlands, Hong Kong, Brazil, Australia, and South Korea are the other countries that 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

1.23 million (25%) domain names registered in May 2020 were registered with GoDaddy. 63% 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. Also, Wix had 10 thousand more registrations compared to the previous month.

5 of the top 10 domain registrars of April 2020 are also in the all-time top 10 domain registrars.

Expiry Date Statistics

91% of the registered domains in May 2020 were registered for one year. 5-year registrations and 10-year registrations are high in comparison to other multiple year registrations. This is probably because some domain registrars suggest and offer discounts for 5-year and 10-year registrations. 

This statistic was almost the same in the previous month.

10% of the registration 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 May 2020

In May 2020, 79 domain names were sold for more than $10,000 and 6 were sold for more than $50,000. The most expensive sale was electriccar.com at $180,000. 

9 of the top 10 sales are .com and there is a ccTLD: hop.in in the list.

We see three 3-letter .com domain name sales and two 4-digit .com domain sales this month.

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

electriccar.com – $180,000

electriccar.com was sold for $180,000 on Sedo, brokered by Dave Evanson. 

More than 140 extensions of “electriccar” are registered and 60 of them are for sale on several domain name marketplaces. 

The domain name was being redirected to a Dan.com landing page before it was sold. 

The domain name now has a one-page website with a contact form. We’ll later see how the new owner will use the domain name.

estates.com – $90,000

Grit Brokerage sold estates.com for $90,000. The domain was sold before for $23,600 on Sedo in 2007. 

The domain name still redirects to an epik.com landing page and there’s a custom promotional video on it that made by Epik. 

The word “estates” is registered with more than 130 extensions and 46 of them are for sale.

There are more than 45 thousand domain names for sale that contain “estate”.

directions.com – $75,000

Directions.com sold at NamesCon Auctions for $75,000. More than 100 extensions of “directions” are registered and 28 of them are for sale. 

It still redirects to a Sedo parking page.

2 other extensions of “directions” were also sold before above $2,000: 

• directions.mobi – $19,000 – 2007
• directions.net – $2,800 – 2016

redx.com – $59,777

RedX.com sold for $59,777. The domain name was purchased by a company that provides real estate solutions. The previous domain name of this company was theredx.com. (Read more details about this sale.)

hop.in – $50,000

hop.in was sold for $50,000 at Sedo. It’s the most expensive ccTLD sale of May 2020. 

The buyer is Hopin Ltd., an online events platform. The main website of the company is hopin.to.

6115.com – $50,000

6115.com was sold for $50,000 on Sedo. The domain name was sold before in 2013 for $3,000, on Sedo again. The previous owner is from the US. 

The buyer is from China. All-digit domain names like this one are very popular in China. 4-digit .com domain names are extremely valuable. 

The most expensive five 4-digit .com domain name sales: 

• 0123.com – $252,500 – 2016
• 8181.com – $225,000 – 2015
• 9595.com – $180,000 – 2015
• 0007.com – $172,500 – 2018
• 5432.com – $148,000 – 2015

tema.com – $43,805

tema.com was sold for $43,805 on Dropcatch. “Tema” means “theme, topic, subject” in languages such as Spanish, Italian, and Turkish. 

Tema.com has been registered since 1997. The domain name has dropped, then caught and sold by Dropcatch via auction. The first auction has ended at $128,938 but the winner didn’t pay. So the domain name was re-auctioned and sold for $43,805. 

The keyword “tema” is registered with more than 150 extensions and 18 of them are for sale. 

Another extension of “tema,” tema.io was sold in the same month for $193 at Dynadot. 

The domain name now shows a for sale landing page. The buyer was probably a domain investor.

codingschool.com – $43,000

codingschool.com was sold for $43,000 on GoDaddy Auctions. More than 40 extensions of “codingschool” are registered and 5 of them are for sale on domain marketplaces. 

The buyers of tema.com and codingschool.com may be the same person because the landing pages on them are identical.

What Was Domain Name Industry Talking About Last Month?

• Interview: Dofo aims to fix domain search: Read Andrew Alleman’s interview with Dofo.com founder & CEO Macit Tuna on how Dofo helps its users. 
• Workforce.com: The danger of not owning the “best” domain for your company: A company that provides workforce management software using workforcesoftware.com shocked when its competitor starts using workforce.com. 
• Facebook Gets Novi.com but Not CatchUp.com: Facebook changed its digital wallet product’s name Calibra to Novi and acquired Novi.com domain name. Facebook also announced a new product called CatchUp but didn’t acquire the exact-match .com domain name. 
• Jason Calacanis talks about the importance of great domains: Investor and entrepreneur Jason Calacanis answers a question about domain names and says “When people see a great domain name like robinhood.com or calm.com, this inspires people because it’s hard to get those domain names.”
• GoDaddy assigns $88.5 million value to Frank Schilling’s domain portfolio: GoDaddy has assigned an $88.5 million accounting value to the approximately 375,000 domain names it acquired from Frank Schilling this year. That means the accounting value is about $235 per domain name.
• GoDaddy is paying $218 million for Neustar’s registry business: GoDaddy has acquired Neustar Registry and disclosed that it’s paying $218 million for the business. The transaction is expected to be closed in the coming months.

Last month, we published several detailed analyses such as:

• Domain Names of Crunchbase Companies
• Domain Preferences of Y Combinator Companies
• What You Should Know About Domain Status Codes
• Everything About 2-Letter .COM Domain Names

We also started publish domain industry interviews on the blog:

• The Story of Dofo with Macit Tuna [Interview]
• The Story of Name Ninja with Bill Sweetman [Interview]