October 2020 Domain Industry Report

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

In October 2020, more than 4.9 million domain names were registered all over the world. As always, .COM is the most popular domain extension with 3.3 million domain names (67%).
The number of registered domain names was the same, 4.9 million, in September 2020.

Top Keywords of Domain Registrations

The top 10 keywords of domain names registered in October 2020 are “shop”, “online”, “home”, “group”, “life”, “world”, “tech”, “store”, “pro”, and “services”.

The 9 most popular keywords are the same as the previous month. “World” keyword entered the top 10 keywords list for the first time this month.

We have been publishing monthly domain industry reports for seven months. The top keywords are the same every month, except for only a few keywords. 

These are the keywords that generally do not change: online, group, shop, home, life, tech and store.

*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 October 2020, as usual, with almost 3.3 million domain registrations. It corresponds to 67 percent of the total registrations. That means more than 110 thousand .com domain names were registered every day averagely.

Nine of the top ten extensions were the same as last month. .Work entered the list instead of shop.

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

Also, we share a post series about domain extensions on Dofo’s Twitter and LinkedIn accounts.

Top Countries

The United States has the most domain registrations, as always. 1.44 million domain names registered in the USA, which is 34 thousand less than the previous month. 

France entered the list instead of Russia in October. The other top nine countries were the same as last month. 

Russia, Singapore, Spain, Australia, and Brazil 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 Panama and Singapore addresses, so we excluded Panama from the list.

Top Domain Registrars

More than 1 million (22%) domain names registered in October 2020 were registered with GoDaddy. 61% of domain names were registered at the top 10 registrars listed above. Eight of the registrars listed on the top 10 were the same as last month. West263 and Dynadot entered the list instead of Openprovider and Wix. For the first time in a long time, Wix could not be ranked in the top 10. West263 was also in the top 10 for the first time since April 2020.

Seven of the top 10 domain registrars of October 2020 are also in the all-time top 10 domain registrars list.

Expiry Date Statistics

92.1 % of the registered domains in October 2020 were registered for one year. Besides, 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.

About 10% of the registrations of COM, NET and ORG extensions have been made for more than a year. The multiple-year registration rate is lower than 3% for new gTLDs. 

(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 October 2020

In October 2020, 87 domain names were sold for more than $10,000, and 8 were sold for more than $50,000. The most expensive sale was caretaker.com at $112,000.

In the previous monthly reports, there were domains other than .com extensions in the top 10 but this month all of the top 10 sales are .COM

We see three 3-letter .com domain name sales (nrh.com, rcv.com, and sww.com) and six 4-letter .com domain sales this month. The number of 4-letter .com domain sales was 8 last month.

We share the weekly top domain sales on Dofo’s Twitter and LinkedIn accounts. We have included many of the domains below in our weekly list.

Two domain names that only consist of numbers were sold above $10,000. They are as follows:

• 77588.com $11,822
• 55123.com $13,750

caretaker.com – $112,000 

Caretaker.com was sold for $112,000. This is the most expensive domain sale in October 2020. 

The buyer, Flip, is a marketplace for rental housing established in New York in 2015. Rebranded as Caretaker, Flip buys this domain, caretaker.com, in October 2020. The company was using a new gTLD, flip.lease domain name, before the rebranding and now it’s redirected to caretaker.com

76 extensions of “caretaker” are registered, and 16 of them are for sale on marketplaces.

confirm.com – $108,000

Confirm.com was sold for $108,000.

There are more than 9 thousand registered domains that include the keyword “confirm”. 126 extensions of “confirm” are registered, and 32 of them are for sale.

.net version of confirm.com was also sold in 2011 for $5,000.

nrh.com – $100,000 

Nrh.com was sold for $100,000, and has not been started to actively used.

According to the Whois records, the new owner of nrh.com is from California. The former owner of this domain was a Canadian domain marketplace named Netincome Ventures Inc.

This sale is the 8th most expensive 3-letter .COM extension sale ever recorded in 2020. The top 10 are as follows:

• nas.com $720,000 | 27 September 2020
• oa.com $609,068 | 27 February 2020
• 151.com $415,000 | 15 March 2020
• aoa.com $200,000 | 29 March 2020
• bao.com $172,984 | 24 March 2020
• wbs.com $115,000 | 30 June 2020
• kau.com $100,350 | 28 October 2020
• nrh.com $100,000 | 11 October 2020
• bti.com $100,000 | 16 February 2020
• ukg.com $90,000 | 5 July 2020
• hfm.com $90,000 | 30 June 2020

More than 86 extensions of “nrh” are registered, and 36 of them are for sale on several domain name marketplaces. 

lightrock.com – $94,888 

Lightrock.com was sold for $94,888.

Domain investor Mike Mann announced this domain sale with a tweet.

According to the Whois records, the registrant is a company called Lightrock Holding Ag based in Liechtenstein.

Also, the same company recently registered the domain lightrock.li, ccTLD of Liechtenstein. The company now uses lgt.com as its website. In the following days, we will see if lightrock.com will also redirect to this address.

uncle.com- $66,002 

Uncle.com was sold for $58,896.

This domain was used as a personal blog site. The former owner of this domain used it as an acronym, UNited Computer Security Lab-E. We will see how the new buyer will use uncle.com soon.

125 extensions of “uncle” are registered, and 31 of them are for sale on several domain name marketplaces. 

.co version of uncle.com was also sold in 2016 for $10,000.

Other domain sales, which include uncle keyword, are as follow:

• unclesam.com $185,750 | 31 October 2006
• unclebubba.com $2,988 | 20 December 2019
• uncles.com $2,900 | 12 July 2017

shun.com – $57,504

Shun.com was sold for $57,504, and has not been started to actively used.

The longtime owner of this domain was Japanese cutlery company called Shun. The company is now using shun.kaiusa.com. We will see how it will come to life with its new owner.

101 extensions of “shun” are registered, and 28 of them are for sale.

moderncomputing.com – $53,900

Moderncomputing.com was sold for $53,900.

According to the Whois records, the registrant is a American company called Dnstination Inc.

Mike Mann announced the sale of the domain, which he bought for $2,144 in 2008.

rcv.com – $53,000

Rcv.com was sold for $53,000.

.net version of rcv, rcv.net, was sold for $1,600  in 2016.

101 extensions of “rcv” are registered, and 27 of them are for sale.

floa.com – $46,758

Floa.com was sold for $46,758.

According to the Whois records, the rgistrant is a company called Floa based in Paris.

This domain previously changed hands in 2015 and 2020. These sales are; 

• floa.com $2,150 | 6 August 2020
• floa.com $783 | 10 October 2015

36 extensions of “floa” are registered, and 5 of them are for sale.

exicon.com – $40,000

Exicon.com was sold for $40,000, and has not been started to actively used.

According to the Whois records, the registrant is a Korean company called Exicon Co. Ltd.

This company is actively using exicon.co.kr. It seems this sale is an Exact-match .COM upgrade.

24 extensions of “exicon” are registered, and 5 of them are for sale.

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 Last Month?

• ICANN announces 2020 financial results: You can read the 2020 report in the shadow of the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak here.
• NamesCon Announces 2021 Schedule of Events: NamesCon announced the dates of its 3 events in 2021. Two of these will be held online.
• NamesCon Online is free for first-timers: The event will take place on January 27-29. The NamesCon will be free for first-time participants.
• Podcast.com Domain Name Acquired by Amazon: Podcast.com was purchased by Amazon and is redirected to its Audible-brand website.
• XYZ acquires 5 more top level domains including .Autos, .Homes: XYZ purchased Dominion Domains’ portfolio, which includes autos, .homes, .boats, .yachts and .motorcycles.
• 1&1 is Kit Sponsor of Borussia Dortmund: Domain registrar 1 1 Ionos sponsored Borussia Dortmund, which plays in the German Bundesliga.

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