September 2020 Domain Industry Report

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

In September 2020, more than 4.9 million domain names were registered all over the world. As always, .COM is the most popular domain extension with 3.4 million domain names (68%).

The number of registered domain names was the same,4.9 million, in August 2020. 

Top Keywords of Domain Registrations

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

The 9 most popular keywords are the same as the previous month. “Design” entered the list this month.

We have been publishing monthly domain industry reports for six months. The top keywords are generally the same for each month, except for a few keywords. The changes taking place in the world sometimes affect the top words registered. For example, covid and health are among the most popular keywords in March 2020. One of the top keywords of June 2020 was black. Common top keywords of the all last six months are 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 September 2020, as usual, with almost 3.4 million domain registrations (68%). That means more than 113 thousand .com domain names were registered every day averagely.

Nine of the top ten extensions were the same as last month. TOP ranked in the top extensions this month. 

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 usual. 1.48 million domain names registered in the USA, which is 18 thousand more than the previous month. 

The top nine countries were the same as last month. Germany entered the list instead of Russia in September.

France, Russia, Australia, Spain, Brazil, and Vietnam 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

Almost 1.1 million (22%) domain names registered in September 2020 were registered with GoDaddy. 60.1% of domain names were registered at the top 10 registrars, above. All the registrars listed above were the same as last month, except for Openprovider. Openprovider entered the list, for the first time, instead of Dynadot.

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

Expiry Date Statistics

90.3% of the registered domains in September 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.

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 multiple-year registration rate is lower than 3%.

(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 September 2020

In September 2020, 87 domain names were sold for more than $10,000, and 9 were sold for more than $50,000. The most expensive sale was nas.com at $720,000. This is also the most expensive sale of 2020 until now.

Seven of the top 10 sales are .com, and there is one .org: piratebay.org. Also there are two ccTLD sales: blog.co.uk and just.me. 

We see one 3-letter .com domain name sale (nas.com) and eight 4-letter .com domain sales in September 2020. The number of 4-letter .com domain sales was 17 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. These are:

• 7633.com $41,410
• 22678.com $15,755

nas.com – $720,000 

nas.com was sold for $720,000. This is the most expensive domain sale of 2020 to date.

According to the Whois records, the new owner of nas.com is from China.

There are more than 780 thousand registered domains that include the keyword “nas”. 251 extensions of “nas” are registered, and 59 of them are for sale on marketplaces.

Most expensive domain sales of 2020 so far:

• nas.com $720,000 | 27 September 2020
• oa.com $609,068 | 27 February 2020
• 151.com $415,000 | 15 March 2020
• boatsforsale.com $396,769 | 30 August 2020
• palace.com $306,000 | 23 February 2020
• kick.com $276,077 | 21 June 2020
• results.com $264,000 | 19 January 2020
• it.co.uk $235,007 | 17 June 2020
• free.co.uk $205,000 | 8 March 2020
• believe.com $200,915 | 21 June 2020

constitutionus.com – $103,000

Constitutionus.com was sold for $103,000 at GoDaddy auctions.

4 extensions of “constitutionus” are registered, and 2 of them are for sale.

ConstitutionUs.com is a website where the US constitution is written.

factoryoutlet.com – $89,999 

Factoryoutlet.com was sold for $89,999.

It is redirected to shop.factoryoutletstore.com. It looks, it is an Exact-Match .COM Upgrade.

62 extensions of “factoryoutlet” are registered, and 16 of them are for sale.

Some other extensions of “factoryoutlet” were also sold before:

• factoryoutlet.com.au $2,880 | 24 July 2013
• factoryoutlet.net $2,400 | 10 July 2007
• factoryoutlet.org $2,000 | 18 November 2008
• factoryoutlet.net $1,299 | 30 July 2011

detour.com – $65,006 

Detour.com was sold for $65,006, and has not been actively used.

This domain previously changed hands in 2019 for $15,000. After this sale, a GPS based walking tours website was developed on the domain names. 

After 2 years, Bose company did not renew this domain and detour.com made its last sale in September 2020, $65,006.

More than 113 extensions of “detour” are registered, and 23 of them are for sale on several domain name marketplaces. 

blog.co.uk – $62,952 

Blog.co.uk was sold for $62,952.

There are more than 467 thousand registered domains that include the keyword “blog”. 446 extensions of “blog” are registered, and 193 of them are for sale.

Some other extensions of “blog” sold before are:

• blog.eu $19,170 | 2 August 2009
• blog.co.uk $6,382 | 19 January 2017
• blog.to $5,800 | 7 January 2020
• blog.no $5,080 | 23 May 2012
• blog.club $2,361 | 5 November 2017
• blog.ly $2,000 | 11 May 2018

hotelsguide.com- $58,896 

Hotelsguide.com was sold for $58,896, and has not been actively used.

According to the Whois records , the registrant is Signivis Srl, a Romanian company.

Hotelsguide.com previously changed hands in 2012 for $60,000.

23 extensions of “hotelsguide” are registered, and 8 of them are for sale on several domain name marketplaces. 

Other most expensive domain sales, which include hotel keyword, are as follow:

• hoteles.es $334,428 | 3 August 2012
• hotels.eu $329,509 | 29 August 2006
• hotel-reservation.com $209,916 | 23 September 2009
• hoteldeals.com $171,250 | 4 December 2006
• cancunhotels.com $120,000 | 10 January 2006
• lahotels.com $100,000 | 21 November 2012
• sydneyhotels.com $100,000 | 9 July 2010

just.me – $50,000 

Just.me, which is the most expensive 6th .me domain sale ever, was sold for $50,000.

According to the WHOIS records, the registrant is a Netfite Gmbh, an German internet service provider company.

Some other extensions of “just” sold before are:

• just.io $7,999 | 20 October 2016
• just.fr $5,200 | 5 January 2013
• just.travel $3,150 | 18 November 2009
• just.property $3,000 | 16 March 2015
• just.us $2,702 | 28 May 2018

There are more than 314 thousand registered domains that include the “just” keyword. 407 extensions of “just” are registered, and 140 of them are for sale.

The most expensive domain sales of .me extension:

• meet.me $450,000 | 23 November 2011
• buy.me $148,350 | 10 October 2012
• interest.me $80,000 | 30 May 2012
• date.me $70,000 | 11 November 2008
• business.me $54,800 | 28 September 2011

trajectory.com – $50,000

Trajectory.com was sold for $50,000, and has not been actively used.

According to the Whois records, the registrant is Xplore Inc whose mission is to accelerate scientific exploration via commercial missions at and beyond Earth. We will see in the coming days in which space project it will be used.

68 extensions of “trajectory” are registered, and 9 of them are for sale.

piratebay.org – $50,000

Piratebay.org was sold for $50,000. 

The Pirate Bay is an online index of digital content of entertainment media and software. 

The domain name sold at auction on DropCatch.It is redirected to odysee.com, a video-sharing platform, for now. 

Five days later from this sale, the .net version was also sold for $3,050. 

120 extensions of “piratebay” are registered, and 47 of them are for sale.

It is the third most expensive .org sale in 2020 after ready.org ($169,888) and healthyamericans.org ($55,000).

daring.com – $48,888

Daring.com was sold for $48,888.

This domain is being used by a startup company that produces plant-based chicken aimed to provide a healthy food alternative. 

Founded in 2018, the company used daringfoods.com. And now it’s redirected to daring.com. It is an Exact-Match .Com Upgrade.

That domain previously changed hands in 2015 for $3,500.

95 extensions of “daring” are registered, and 17 of them are for sale.

lokal.com – $48,064

Lokal.com was sold for $48,064, and has not been actively used.

.at version of this domain, lokal.at, was sold for $5,562 in 2009.

158 extensions of “lokal” are registered, and 28 of them are for sale.

bags.co.uk – $47,558

Bags.co.uk, the second most expensive .co.uk domain, was sold for $47,588.

It is redirected to koffer.com. Koffer means suitcase in German. It may have been purchased to reach wider audiences in the market. We will see how the domain will be used in the coming days.

There are more than 70 thousand registered domains that include the keyword “bags”. 186 extensions of “bags” are registered, and 53 of them are for sale.

Some other extensions of “bags”sold before are:

• bags.org $4,903 | 19 February 2019
• bags.eu $1,400 | 10 February 2010
• bags.eu $1,000 | 23 January 2011
• bags.net.au $209 | 11 October 2009
• bags.to $190 | 14 February 2020

7633.com – $41,410

7633.com was sold for $41,410, and has not been actively used.

According to the Whois records, the new owner of 7633.com is from Beijing, China.

24 extensions of “7633” are registered and 5 of them are for sale.

8153.com is the most expensive 4th 4-digit .COM domain sale of 2020. The other most expensive 4 digit domain sales in 2020 are:

• 7910.com $83,250 | 23 January 2020
• 0778.com $64,000 | 21 February 2020
• 6115.com $50,000 | 10 May 2020
• 1269.com $40,500 | 18 May 2020
• 2633.com $37,000 | 10 April 2020

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?

• Conrad out, Robrock in as CEO at Sedo: After 20 months as CEO, Matthias Conrad handed over the position to Michael Robrock, who is currently the company’s COO.
• NamesCon Online: Ethics and best practices in domain brokerage: NamesCon 2020 was held in September with a large audience.
• The Top 10 domain name registrars: ICANN has published Verisign’s latest official data on the .com namespace for May 2020.
• CentralNic to acquire monetization company Codewise for $36 million:CentralNic announced that it has acquired Codewise, a collection of advertising and domain monetization companies, for $ 36 million.
• GoDaddy acquires WooCommerce plugin developer: GoDaddy acquired WooCommerce plugin developer SkyVerge for an undisclosed price.
• DAN / Bodis Partnership Announced: DAN will partner with Bodin for the parking service.

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