NNNNN Domains

Registration of 6N.com Domains Crashes

2022-01-30T13:37:00.003-08:00

After finally becoming bought out in 2015, registration of 6N.com domains has been steadily declining. In the last couple months, the bottom has fallen out of this market.

With nearly half a million 6N.com domains now available for registration, it is going to take a lot of money flooding in to the market for these domains to be bought out again. I expect the market to stabilize around 50% registration for 6N's.

4.5 Million .com Domains Drop

2021-11-15T11:49:00.004-08:00

Someone dropped a ridiculous number of .com domains this past week. The number of .com domains has been steadily rising for the past several years. In June of 2021, there were 160 million .com domains registered. As of November 7, 2021, there were 163,314,752 million .com domains registered. When we checked again on November 12, there were 158,828,297 million .com domains registered. An enormous and unusual drop-off in registered .coms. Were any short domains dropped? It seems the portfolio held many short domains and these were dropped across the board.

On November 7, 2021, there were 579,948 4-character .com domains registered. Then when we checked again on November 12, there were 563,045 4-character .com domains registered.

Same for 5-letter .coms. On November 7 there were 3,150,724 .com domains of this type registered. By November 12, there were 3,065,423 5-letter .com domains registered.

Same pattern as well for 6 number .com domains. On November 7 there were 667,560 registered 6-number .com domains. But by November 12, there were 646,907 6-number .com domains registered.

Short domains dropping across all types. Definitely seems like a large holder decided not to renew an enormous portfolio, with lots of short domains in it. Domains registered tracked using dofo.com's helpful search function.

How Many .COM Domains Are Registered Each Day

2021-04-09T22:12:00.004-07:00

As of today, there are 158,449,602 .COM domains registered. Four days ago, on April 5, 2021, there were 158,124,528 .COM domains registered. That represents a registration rate of 81,269/day over the last four days. Is that a lot? It is! The average number of .COM domains registered/day since September 25, 2000 has averaged 18,724 .COM domains/day. Here are some data points for reference:

Definitely a lot of .COM domains were registered over the last few days, but it's also probably too small a sample size to mean much. Registration shows no signs of slowing though, after more than 20 years of registrations!

Price of Short Domains Across .Com .Net and .Org

2021-04-09T15:23:00.002-07:00

A Graph of Price & Scarcity in Short Domains

2021-04-07T19:00:00.001-07:00

For the most part, wholesale prices track scarcity. But there are a couple exceptions.

Registration Data for Very Long Character Domains

2021-03-27T14:57:00.000-07:00

Very long character .com domains (domains that have numbers & letters) have seen a steady rise in registration since we last checked. Here are the updated numbers.

Registration Data for Very Long Numerics (Updated)

2021-03-27T14:37:00.003-07:00

Unlike registration data for long letter .com domains, registration data for long numeric .com domains is mostly down, following the significant slump in the numerics market. Here is the updated data:

Registration Data for Very Long Letter Domains (Update)

2021-03-27T14:30:00.001-07:00

Registration for very long letter domains continues to increase. Surprisingly, 5L domains is the only length that has seen a decrease in registrations since April of 2019. Here are the numbers:

Volume and Price in the 3C Market

2020-05-27T11:29:00.003-07:00

In this post we take a look at volume in the 3C.com market. On average, 84 3-character .com domains sold each month since January, 2017, or 0.02% of the total supply of these domains. Volume was much higher in 2017 (and in two months in mid-2018), but since then has been relatively stable.

Month # of 4L.com Sales

May-20	47
Apr-20	40
Mar-20	60
Feb-20	51
Jan-20	48
Dec-19	20
Nov-19	28
Oct-19	25
Sep-19	24
Aug-19	35
Jul-19	44
Jun-19	35
May-19	54
Apr-19	42
Mar-19	45
Feb-19	49
Jan-19	47
Dec-18	55
Nov-18	36
Oct-18	45
Sep-18	343
Aug-18	213
Jul-18	41
Jun-18	57
May-18	42
Apr-18	67
Mar-18	81
Feb-18	86
Jan-18	94
Dec-17	87
Nov-17	45
Oct-17	50
Sep-17	156
Aug-17	123
Jul-17	109
Jun-17	354
May-17	291
Apr-17	119
Mar-17	116
Feb-17	79
Jan-17	89

Volume and Price in the 4L Market

2020-05-27T10:54:00.004-07:00

Following up on our post on 5N.com volume, we took a look at volume in the 4L.com market. Here is the list of 4L domains sold each month in the past few years, according to Shortnames. The average is 788 domains sold/month. Volume and price has been relatively stable in this market compared to the 5N market, with floor price declining to (and staying) around $100 since the beginning of 2018. Worth noting that sale volume was also higher in 2017 while the market was in the process of bottoming. As a percentage of the total supply, only 0.17% of the 4L market turns over every month, as compared with 0.32% for 5N.com's.

Month # of 4L.com Sales

May-20	369
Apr-20	672
Mar-20	523
Feb-20	425
Jan-20	391
Dec-19	429
Nov-19	750
Oct-19	515
Sep-19	461
Aug-19	396
Jul-19	403
Jun-19	607
May-19	835
Apr-19	631
Mar-19	589
Feb-19	579
Jan-19	648
Dec-18	591
Nov-18	656
Oct-18	588
Sep-18	655
Aug-18	521
Jul-18	536
Jun-18	910
May-18	962
Apr-18	992
Mar-18	1,127
Feb-18	734
Jan-18	1,111
Dec-17	1,597
Nov-17	1,502
Oct-17	1,191
Sep-17	813
Aug-17	634
Jul-17	831
Jun-17	1,489
May-17	1,185
Apr-17	1,115
Mar-17	1,352
Feb-17	1,298
Jan-17	704

Volume and Price in the 5N Market

2020-05-27T10:38:00.000-07:00

Thought it would be interesting to look at the volume of 5N.com sales. Here is the list of 5N domains sold each month in the past few years, according to Shortnames. The average is 325 domains sold/month, and early this year it was running well behind the average. In April sales picked up a bit, and May seems to be on track for a normal month as well.

Month # of 5n.com Sales

May-20	283
Apr-20	310
Mar-20	172
Feb-20	171
Jan-20	125
Dec-19	128
Nov-19	286
Oct-19	357
Sep-19	441
Aug-19	523
Jul-19	537
Jun-19	616
May-19	343
Apr-19	435
Mar-19	374
Feb-19	247
Jan-19	299
Dec-18	345
Nov-18	287
Oct-18	367
Sep-18	354
Aug-18	453
Jul-18	336
Jun-18	400
May-18	411
Apr-18	508
Mar-18	410
Feb-18	155
Jan-18	321
Dec-17	157
Nov-17	323
Oct-17	245
Sep-17	192
Aug-17	246
Jul-17	295
Jun-17	269
May-17	321
Apr-17	351
Mar-17	333
Feb-17	278
Jan-17	189

While volume picked back up last month, price has seemed to fall off. Floor price according to Shortnames is now under $300, and looking on Ename, 5n's are being offered for sale at even lower buy-it-now prices (e.g., 36430 for 1,528 CNY, or $215 USD, and 14684 for 1,700 CNY, or $237 USD).

Short Domain Update for Passover

2020-04-09T18:46:00.002-07:00

Here at NNNNNDomains we like to keep track of short domain registrations, to try and figure out which type of domain is going to be the next to be bought out (and when the buyout might occur). With the recent tumult in markets, domain registration has stalled a bit as well. Also, given that today is Passover, it's a good time to take stock of domain past, present, and future.

The past:

4C Historical Registrations
06/18/2019 - 636,418 (average of 342 registered/day since prior check)
04/16/2019 - 614,877 (average of 91 registered/day since prior check)
12/04/2018 - 602,771 (average of 190 registered/day since prior check)
01/11/2018 - 540,794 (average of 153 registered/day since prior check)
05/01/2012 - 300,000 (average of 55 registered/day since prior check)
02/01/2008 - 215,000

5L Historical Registrations
8/9/2019: 3,156,254 registered
4/16/2018: 3,257,718 registered

6N Historical Registrations
8/9/2019: 796,854 registered
4/16/2018: 771,128 registered

The present:

There are currently 671,359 four character (4C) .com domains registered.
There are currently 3,240,940 five letter (5L) .com domains registered.
There are currently 788,333 six number (6N) .com domains registered.

The future:

Looking forward, 6N's (six number .com domains) are still the most likely to be bought out first, of the three categories noted above. However, the total registered 6N's has fallen since the last time we checked in August of 2019. So registrations would need to pick up, and with global markets in chaos, this might not happen for a while. We are now targeting a buyout of the 6N's probably in 2024 or 2025.

The rate of daily registration for 4C.com domains has fallen to around 118 since the last time we checked (when it was 342). At this rate, we may not see a buyout of the 4C's until 2032!

Finally, somewhere on this site there is a hidden picture of a broken matzah... Find it, and you have found the afikoman.

Andrew Yang is Winning the Website Primary

2019-09-13T09:10:00.001-07:00

Andrew Yang's debate surprise has apparently driven substantial traffic to his campaign website.

All-time traffic high on https://t.co/nYWdJYpqVC last night. Must have been something I said.
— Andrew Yang (@AndrewYang) September 13, 2019

However, it looks like this traffic is not a new phenomenon. Yang's website has been dominant among the Democratic campaign websites for some time. Here are the Alexa worldwide traffic rankings for the top candidate sites, 90 days ago vs. today:

Yang2020 (.com) #22,715 -> #15,758
BernieSanders (.com) #25,754 -> #26,131
ElizabethWarren (.com) #40,779 -> #29,623
PeteForAmerica (.com) #33,185 -> #61,544
KamalaHarris (.org) #88,914 -> #69,548
JoeBiden (.com) #95,039 -> #77,889

Yang's campaign website is not only clearly leading the pack now, but it was also leading 90 days ago (before his recent surge). Website traffic is probably a leading indicator for campaign strength. Anyone surprised by Yang's recent surge in the polls might have seen this coming had they checked Alexa traffic rankings three months ago.

This is good news for Yang, and means more excitement, more fundraising, and more coverage in the months to come. Driving traffic to a campaign website is only one part of a successful Presidential campaign, but it has become an increasingly important one.

Also, worth noting that Yang's site is the only top Democratic campaign site that includes numbers and letters. It is also a relatively short domain at only 7 characters.

CCCC .com Registration Continues to Slow

2019-09-11T10:58:00.000-07:00

As we noted recently, registration of 4 character .com domains (which has been on a tear for the whole year), finally has hit a rough patch. Here are the updated numbers of registered 4 character .com domains:

8/27/19: 666,769
9/3/19: 664,324 (-2,445)
9/6/19: 661,110 (-3,214)

9/11/19: 656,408 (-4,702)

Registration has fallen by more than 10,000 in just a couple weeks. This is still probably a blip, as registrations are still way up for the year. But it does show some slowdown in this market. Part of the reason for the decrease in registrations has certainly been the uptick in domains dropping. It looks like the dropped domains have not been immediately scooped up, and registrations may take some time to recover.

Registrations for other types of short domains remain strong. So this is likely due in large part to the abnormally high number of CCCC's dropping in recent weeks. We will continue to monitor and report on registration rates.

New Liquid Domains Industry Report

2019-09-11T10:48:00.002-07:00

This is a big development for the short domain community. Giuseppe Graziano from GGRG and LXME has been publishing a quarterly report on the short domain industry for some time. I have read these quarterly reports with great interest, as I know many others have as well.

The quarterly reports have now undergone a significant makeover, and are now available on the web with crisp graphics and smooth navigation.

Check them out here.

It is especially interesting to see development statistics, sales data, and comparisons with larger markets (like Bitcoin and gold) all in one place. Great job Giuseppe! I will continue to use your quarterly reports as a resource for understanding the short domain market.

Short Domain Registration Slows. Sign of Recession?

2019-09-06T10:44:00.000-07:00

The past couple weeks marks the first time this year that short domain registration for both CCCC.coms and NNNNNN.com's has declined.

Here are the numbers:

NNNNNN.com registrations:

8/27/2019 797,285
9/3/2019 796,353 (-932)
9/6/2019 795,370 (-983)

CCCC.com registrations:

8/27/19: 666,769
9/3/19: 664,324 (-2,445)
9/6/19: 661,110 (-3,214)

Is this an initial sign of a coming recession? Perhaps. But it also just might be a spike in drops, though. A few weeks ago upcoming drops for CCCC.com's spiked to 5,039, they had been averaging under 2,000 for the rest of the year. The number of NNNNNN.com's dropping hasn't increased substantially, but at the same time the decline in NNNNNN.com registration these past couple weeks has not been as stark as with the CCCC.com's. So it might just be a blip.

Another hint that this may just be a blip is that LLLLL.com registration has continued apace. 5,341 more LLLLL.com's are now registered than were registered a couple weeks ago. So it looks like people are still registering new short domains.

Still, we will keep an eye on short domain registrations for any sign of a coming recession.

Registration Update - Short Domains (4C, 5L, 6N)

2019-08-19T10:08:00.001-07:00

It is often useful to check and see how close the "next" short domain type is to being bought out, and how the domain type is trending.

4 character (4C or CCCC.com's) are hot right now, and are being registered at a steady pace. There are approximately 1.2 million 4 character domains in total. They are still far from being all bought out (another 5-7 years perhaps), but here are some recent data points to give an idea of how popular they are:

April 16, 2018: 614,877 registered
August 19, 2019: 664,451 registered

6 number (6N or NNNNNN.com domains) are also being registered at a strong pace. There are 1 million total, and these are the closest to being bought out (again), perhaps only a couple years until the 6N buyout:

April 16, 2018: 771,128 registered
August 19, 2019: 796,854 registered

As for five letter domains (5L or LLLLL.com's), these are far from being bought out. There are 11,881,376 total of these domains, and we only have a couple data points here:

April 16, 2019: 3,257,718 registered
August 19, 2019: 3,156,254 registered

Registration's for 5L's actually declined in the last few months which was surprising. We will keep a closer eye on these domains. There is not much chance there will be a buyout of 5L's for decades (if ever), but it is still interesting to see the numbers as a bell-weather for short domain, and letter registrations, in general.

CCCC.com (4C) Domain Registration Update

2019-06-18T14:20:00.004-07:00

There continues to be steady registration of 4 character .com names. Here are numbers of registered names as of our checks dating back to February, 2008:

06/18/2019 - 636,418 (average of 342 registered/day since prior check)

04/16/2019 - 614,877 (average of 91 registered/day since prior check)

12/04/2018 - 602,771 (average of 190 registered/day since prior check)

01/11/2018 - 540,794 (average of 153 registered/day since prior check)

05/01/2012 - 300,000 (average of 55 registered/day since prior check)

02/01/2008 - 215,000

Average registered per day since January 2018 - 183.

If the current rate holds up, CCCC.com domains should be bought out around 2027-2028. The data from 2012 and 2008 is not precise, we were using random sampling techniques back then, but it should be in the ballpark of the number of registered domains. We will keep regular track of these, which is easier to do now with the handy tool that dofo.com provides which lets you see all registered domains of a particular type.

Registration Data for (Very) Long Letter Domains

2019-04-16T16:40:00.001-07:00

We've done this for numerics, and thought it would be interesting to see how registration rates look for longer letter domains. Like much longer letter domains. Here are the number of registered letter domains according to dofo for all strings of letters, from 1 letter domains up to 30 letter domains. Only .coms were looked at.

What is interesting is that the number of .com letter domains peaks at 11-length (9.6 million registered). Then registration rates start to fall, but not by much.

Number of Letters		Number Registered
1		26
2		676
3		17,576
4		456,976
5		3,257,718
6		5,690,913
7		6,233,995
8		7,648,600
9		8,582,454
10		9,423,782
11		9,649,620
12		9,461,404
13		8,969,298
14		8,282,875
15		7,329,996
16		6,376,458
17		5,492,672
18		4,549,593
19		3,698,050
20		3,020,999
21		2,389,850
22		1,880,458
23		1,469,796
24		1,118,642
25		838,496
26		630,085
27		460,372
28		334,697
29		245,998
30		177,835

Where Did the Volume Go?

2019-03-27T17:46:00.000-07:00

Although there are a couple days left in the 1st quarter of 2019, it is pretty obvious that there is going to be a significant decrease in trading volume among almost all categories of short domains. We say "almost all" because there is one category of short domains that is doing fine on volume, and may even surpass Q1 2018 when all is said and done. Can you guess which one it is???

Here are the numbers (from ShortNames):

CCC.com sales declined from 257 in Q1 2018 to 129 in Q1 2019.

LLL.com sales declined from 33 sales in Q1 2018 to 18 sales in Q1 2019.

LLLL.com sales declined from 2,917 sales in Q1 2018 to 1,679 sales in Q1 2019.

NNNN.com sales declined from 11 in Q1 2018 to 8 in Q1 2019.

And....

NNNNN.com sales stayed almost perfectly steady, there were 886 sales in Q1 2018, and 867 have been reported in Q1 2019. Almost no change at all.

It is not surprising to see the decline in sales volumes across the board, the market is still recovering from the last parabolic rise and fall in short domain prices. Look at what Bitcoin is doing recently. But what is intriguing is that NNNNN.com domains seem to be largely unaffected by the decline in volume. This might be a good sign for NNNNN.com domains, or it could just reflect that these domains are less likely to be developed than the other types noted above, and instead are more likely to be traded. Will be interesting to track volume the rest of the year, and see how the various pieces of the short domain market adjust to the new realities.

LLL Traffic Statistics

2019-02-21T09:19:00.000-08:00

We looked at 1,000 random 3 letter .com domains, to see what traffic statistics looked like. Here's what we discovered. 138 domains had top country traffic rankings (13.8%). Of these, here is how they broke down:

84 were in the US
8 in China
4 in Russia
3 in Saudi Arabia
3 in India
3 in Germany
2 in the UK
2 in Nepal2 in Myanmar
2 in Iran
2 in Egypt2 in Bangladesh
2 in Australia
2 in Canada
1 each in Botswana, Brazil, Czech Republic, Greece, Indonesia, Madagascar, Mexico, Nigeria, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Israel, Japan, Spain, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Uzbekistan.

So the vast majority were in the United States, and remarkably few in China.

As for overall traffic, 108 domains (10.8%) had traffic rankings in the top 1 million of sites worldwide. As one might expect, the top 10 had very strong traffic numbers:

1. BBC.com (#94)
2. MLB.com (#1,903)
3. BBT.com (#4,163)
4. MTB.com (#9,281)
5. ISD.com (#15,682)
6. BTC.com (#16,093)
7. VSP.com (#16,489)
8. TCM.com (#19,606)
9. RIL.com (#24,502)
10. TOM.com (#25,403)

Deep Dive into CCC's (Part I) - LNN.com Domains

2019-02-20T14:16:00.005-08:00

We have been focusing on short domain traffic statistics, to see if this gives any insight into different short domain types. So far, we have looked at NN.com's, LL.com's, CC.com's, and NNN.com's. We wanted to look at CCC.com's (character, character, character), but this market seems quite fragmented. There is a big difference between 11A.com and j0i.com, for instance. So one way to break these down is into Number-Letter patterns.

The first pattern we looked at was LNN.com's. These are letter-number-number, and we expected that their traffic statistics would be one of the stronger of the CCC.com's. Here's what we found.

In a random sample of 1,000 LNN.com's, we found 17 (1.7%) with country traffic rankings on Alexa. Of these:

10 were in the United States
3 in China
2 in Russia
1 each in Hong Kong and Japan

As for the top 10 LNN.com's we surveyed, here is the list:

1. U77.com (#28,760)
2. U51.com (#69,328)
3. D23.com (#104,929)
4. L99.com (#157,338)
5. A67.com (#270,636)
6. Z57.com (#304,674)
7. E87.com (#307,343)
8. K11.com (#432,469)
9. M18.com (#495,138)
10. C64.com (#561,990)

Not great. Not one LNN finished in the top 10,000 and only 13 total domains (1.3%) had traffic ranks in the top 1 million of sites worldwide. One thing that seemed noteworthy is that of the top 4 sites, 3 have country ranks in China, which is in fact all the sites with China rankings. So to the extent there is a "future" for these domains, it seems almost certain to be in China.

Next we will look at NLL.com's, and see if the results are similar.

Traffic Stats for NNN.com Domains

2019-02-19T14:29:00.002-08:00

We looked at three digit .com numeric domains, numbered 100 through 999. The traffic results were as follows:

51 domains (5.67%) had country ranks on Alexa's traffic rankings:

21 were in China
12 were in the United States
2 in the United Kingdom
2 in Malaysia
2 in India
2 in Hong Kong
1 each of Taiwan, UAE, Slovenia, Russia, Japan, Isle of Man, Egypt, Costa Rica, Cambodia, and Brazil.

47 domains (5.22%) had traffic in the top 1 million on Alexa's rankings. Here are the top 10 NNN.com domains, by traffic rank on Alexa:

163 .com	(#95)
178 .com	(#841)
360 .com	(#2,213)
258 .com	(#4,075)
115 .com	(#5,589)
500 .com	(#7,589)
110 .com	(#10,238)
265 .com	(#12,481)
233 .com	(#16,905)
160 .com	(#19,959)

Deep Dive into NN.com's - Traffic Stats

2019-02-17T11:19:00.000-08:00

NN.com's have more traffic than I expected. We looked at Alexa traffic rankings for all 100 NN.com's (number - number), and found that a significant proportion of these have strong traffic rankings.

25 of these had Alexa traffic rankings graphed, which means they have consistently been in the top 1 million of all domains by traffic. That's 25% of NN.com's.

23 of two-digit .com's had country rankings listed. Here are the countries that were reflected:

12 Domains had traffic rankings in China.
3 in Egypt
3 in the United States
2 in Japan
1 in each of Nigeria, India, and Pakistan

But it's not just the number of NN.com's that have high traffic rankings, it is how high those rankings are. Here are the top 10 NN.com's by traffic ranking:

1. 58 .com (#804)
2. 99 .com (#4,978)
3. 53 .com (#5,988)
4. 56 .com (#9,736)
5. 37 .com (#20,635)
6. 51 .com (#23,731)
7. 61 .com (#37,728)
8. 55 .com (#37,809)
9. 28 .com (#40,880)
10. 35 .com (#41,287)

Deep Dive into CC.com's - Part II

2019-02-16T06:03:00.000-08:00

This is the second in a series of posts that focus on short domain development. Last time we looked at LN.com's with no "0" and no "o". This time we are looking at NL's (Number-Letter). We checked each domain's statistics on Alexa's traffic analysis site, and here were the findings:

Again, 30 domains were listed with specific top rankings in different countries (13.33%):

16 in the United States
3 in China
2 in Egypt
2 in India
1 in each of Algeria, Bangladesh, Taiwan, Thailand, Russia, Poland, and Pakistan

There are more hits in Asia this time, possibly because numbers are more popular there.

29 domains had actual traffic ranking statistics reflected in Alexa's traffic graph (12.89%). Again, my understanding is that Alexa only has this feature available for domains that consistently rank in the top 1 million of sites worldwide.

Here are the top 10 NL.com's (in terms of global traffic ranking) with no "0" and no "o":

1. 4J .com (#12,456)
2. 3M .com (#15,060)
3. 5H .com (#16,602)
4. 2K .com (#24,203)
5. 3U .com (#34,793)
6. 1X .com (#39,696)
7. 5D .com (#51,086)
8. 2P .com (#97,656)
9. 4K .com (#97,901)
10. 2U .com (#165,177)