.COM.AU and .ORG Hit Milestones

On the ccTLD-front, AusRegistry reported that they reached two million .com.au domains under management this week. There are some pretty tight rules surrounding the registration of .com.au domain names, so the figure represents an impressive milestone for Australia. Given it’s relatively small population, it’s clear that Australians see value in .com.au domain names and that the extension provides a sense of trust for both those using .com.au domains and also for Internet users in the country.

Public Interest Registry (PIR) who operate the .org registry also hit a milestone, announcing recently that they had surpassed nine million domains under management. They also noted that growth in 2010 was 10.3% for the extension. The .org domain has added more than five million domains since 2005 and is the third largest generic top-level domain (gTLD) in the world.

VeriSign Domain Industry Brief

February also saw the release of the latest issue of the VeriSign Domain Industry Brief. This quarterly report looks at all sectors of the domain world and identifies interesting trends and stats in gTLDs and ccTLDs, and provides a good evaluation of the health of the industry as a whole.

The latest brief showed continued growth in domains under management with 205.3 million domain registrations across all TLDs. That’s a year-over-year growth rate of about 6.3%. In ccTLDs, a total of 80.1 million domains are registered representing a year-over-year growth rate of 0.3%. Its important to note that growth in ccTLDs was affected by a contraction in the number of .cn domains under management as a result of significant restrictions placed on new and current .cn registrations by the Chinese government.

Strong growth seen in .org and across a number of ccTLDs

Of the 205.3 million total domains registered, 105.2 million are .com or .net, showing that those two gTLD extensions still command some impressive numbers despite the rise in ccTLDs over the past few years. On the ccTLD side, .de leads the way, outpacing even .net to stand as the second largest registry in the world. Second amongst ccTLDs is .uk, followed by .cn and then .nl, .eu and .ru.

Growth wise, a number of larger ccTLDs experienced better than industry-average growth this year, including Poland (.pl), Australia (.au), Canada (.ca) and Switzerland (.ch).

How to Take Advantage

While these numbers and reports make for some interesting reading, it’s also important to note that they can be a great help in identifying potential growth markets, and in evaluating your own businesses. ccTLDs with above average growth rates are often indicative of countries where the Internet industry as a whole is seeing expansion. You don’t have to look far to see opportunities in places like Poland, or in Central America and Mexico in particular. Currently the top 10 ccTLDs represent 61% of all ccTLDs registered, but as countries and economies emerge, expect to see that number drop as the Internet penetrates new, growing markets.

To evaluate your own business, look at industry renewal and growth rates. Renewal rates for .com and .net rose slightly to about 73% in Q4, 2010. Is that in line with what you see in your business? Keep in mind that your rates should probably exceed that as the renewal rates for domains “in use” or attached to hosting tend to be higher than the overall average.

All in all, it has been another good year for the industry as a whole. Based on early news from registries like .au and .org, 2011 is looking solid as well.

Effective April 1, 2011 at 00:00:00 GMT, price increases for .BIZ and .ORG domains will go into effect at the registries. These costs are payable directly to the registry by OpenSRS for domain registrations and we really have no choice but to pass those costs along to resellers and, in turn, to consumers.

Here’s the breakdown for each top-level domain (TLD) involved:

.BIZ (operated by Neustar) – view ICANN notice

• Registry fee increase takes effect on April 1, 2011 at 00:00:00 GMT.
• New cost for a .BIZ domain payable to the registry is USD $7.30 (an increase of USD $0.45 from USD $6.85)
• Total OpenSRS cost including ICANN fee and OpenSRS Management Fee will be USD $10.48.

.ORG (operated by Public Interest Registry) – view ICANN notice

• Registry fee increase takes effect on April 1, 2011 at 00:00:00 GMT.
• New cost for a .ORG domain payable to the registry is USD $7.21 (an increase of USD $0.46 from USD $6.75)
• Total OpenSRS cost including ICANN fee and OpenSRS Management Fee will be USD $10.39.

Our Cost-Plus Pricing Model for gTLDs Provides Cost Certainty

Thanks to our Cost-Plus model for gTLDs, OpenSRS Resellers have complete visibility to our costs associated with domain names. It also means that, as with past registry cost increases, we aren’t going to use these registry price increases as an opportunity to raise our prices on these or other gTLDs by piling on increases for domains where our costs are not increasing.

We strongly believe that our transparent pricing model gives you comfort in clearly understanding how we approach pricing, and provides you with confidence in terms of what you can expect around pricing in the future.

Public Internet Registry (PIR), the operator of the .org domain extension released the report, which showed 7.6% growth in the .org domain in the first half of 2010. That’s twice the growth compared to 2009 and signals continued strength in the .org extension.

Some other figures of interest:

• The growth of .org in the first half of 2010 outpaced both .com and .net over the same period.
• New creates for .org showed 16.5% growth, on par with both .com and .net.
• 77.1% of organizations renewed their .org domains for one to three years, an increase of 4% over 2009.
• North America and the European Union continued to represent the regions with the most .org registrations. China showed growth of 4% in the first half of 2010.

With over 8.5 million .org domains registered, .org is the third largest generic top-level domain (gTLD), behind .com and .net.

You can always download the latest version of the “The Dashboard” from PIR’s website at http://pir.org/news/dashboard

Probably the most familiar .ORG domain on the web today is wikipedia.org. This gTLD was created in 1984 as one of the Internet’s original top-level domains, and has wide-ranging use including open source projects (drupal.org), sports groups (www.specialolympics.org), advocacy (www.kiva.org) and causes (www.cbcf.org). As the third largest gTLD, it is used worldwide, connecting smaller pockets of communities and giving them collective global reach. Public Interest Registry (PIR), the .ORG registry operator since 2003, has embraced social media to support organizations in a wide variety of ways including their YouTube Channel and World Voices events program. Your customers will find all types of videos highlighting the various uses of .ORG. Check out the video below.

.ORG Quick Facts

• There are more than 7 million .ORG domains around the world.
• It is the third largest gTLD behind .COM and .NET.
• PIR (Public Interest Registry) is the registry operator.
• Anyone can buy this gTLD.
• They were the official sponsor for the 13th Annual Webby Awards.
• PIR is actively promoting implementation of Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) for their TLD and signed their zone on June 2, 2009.

The Many Uses of .ORG

Available Resources:
Registries offer a wide range of resources for Resellers. Here are some of the key links you can use to learn more about .ORG:

• .ORG blog
• .ORG Knowledge Center
• Directory of Resources
• Email newsletters
• YouTube channel
• .ORG Facebook Group
• Orgbuzz on Twitter
• Orgbuzz on Flickr

.ORG Promotion:
Our .ORG promotion started on June 1st and continues until July 31, 2009. There’s more information on the promotion page.

Earlier this week, The Public Interest Registry, the registry behind the global .ORG domain name, announced that more than 7 million domain names are now registered as .ORG. This makes it the third largest generic domain (after .com and .net).

Both registries hit 7 million in the same week and both registries are undertaking marketing activities to drive more registrations. On the .ORG side, they are hoping to extend their traditional non-profit base to attract new registrants to .ORG. Specifically, they are addressing a growing audience of community sites, sites for colloborative content, online political organizing, the “green” movement and empowered citizens looking to further passions or causes. Nominet is executing a .UK renewal awareness campaign “to raise renewal rates by encouraging registrants to think about the value of their domain name and to use their registrar for all aspects of domain maintenance and renewal.” You can take a look at their campaign site at http://www.keepyour.co.uk.

Both .ORG and .UK are available as part of the OpenSRS Domains Service.

photo: Seven uploaded by Kevin