Free, High-Quality Research: The VeriSign Domain Name Industry Brief

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By: Adam Eisner on December 15th, 2008
Posted in: Reseller Resources
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One of my favourite destinations for free, timely market research on domain names is VeriSign’s Domain Name Industry Brief. VeriSign, the registry operator for .COM, .NET and other popular extensions, puts a lot of resources into producing these Briefs, which are quarterly reports focusing on the state of the domain name industry. VeriSign also periodically releases special reports on specific topics, such as the state of the domain name market in Latin America and the Domain Name Primer, an in-depth look into how domain names work.

Earlier this month VeriSign released their last Brief of the year, which as usual was packed with all sorts of interesting facts. I always encourage our customers to read these Briefs, as they’re often full of data that can help our customers grow their businesses. For example:

• According to this quarter’s brief, the top five ccTLD registries in Q3 by domain name base were: .CN, .DE, .UK, .NL and .EU. All of these represent large domain markets which are experiencing significant growth. These also happen to be easy domain extensions to introduce to your business using OpenSRS.
• In Q3 2008, the .COM/.NET renewal rate industry-wide was 72 percent. If your renewal rates don’t hover around 70 percent, it can be a signal that your business may be experiencing retention/satisfaction issues. You can monitor your renewal rates and other business facts using the “Advanced Business Reports” link in OpenSRS.
• A surge in online video viewership and use, combined with an increase in quarterly .TV registrations, is making the .TV increasingly relevant and useful. The .TV extension is another easy opportunity to introduce a new domain name into your sales process.

I find that the Brief is rather well-hidden on VeriSign’s site, and that each one is released with little fanfare. I highly recommend bookmarking the site and checking it quarterly; I’m sure many industry participants still have yet to discover this data gem.