Nominet’s Domain Name Industry Report Reveals Some Nice Data

Nominet was nice enough to share some of the data they’ve compiled over the last year.  The study was on .uk domains but I am going to assume that the data is very similar for most major tlds.  Here are a few things I found interesting

1.  What domains are being used for.

For those sites that did resolve to a valid web page:

• Business sites account for 43% (33% of total). In 2008 this was 38% (29% of total)
• Parked pages account for 29% (22% of total). In 2008 this was 28% (21% of total)
• Holding pages account for 19% (15% of total). In 2008 this was 20.5% (16% of total)
• Other sites accounting for 6% comprised; Clubs and associations, Charities, Government, Personal sites, Schools and Academia and Adult content.

2.  Global Domain Market Penetration. Although I think the numbers may be skewed by non nationals registering the domains, it is interesting to see the ccTLDs viewed by penetration in addition to just sheer numbers.  China may have millions of dot cn names their billions of people keep the penetration low.

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3.  Dot Com Market Share is Decreasing. Dot com’s market share of all TLDs has fallen from 50% in 2000 to 44% today.  I think that is a good thing.  I want dot com to be special and the smaller the market share the more valuable it becomes in my eyes.  The data continues to prove that they can make more TLDs but they’ll never make more dot coms and that’s good for dot com investors.

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If you want to view more of the data please visit the source of this data Nominet