Domain name purchase inquires have surged significantly in the past few months. In the past 2 months since the beginning of the COVID pandemic offers on domains through DomainAgents is up 20% compared to last year.
Nominet, a UK local registry, recorded an increase in domain name registrations in April as compared to March. April is normally a pretty quiet month at Nominet so this was an unusual spike.
Here in Australia auDA reported that “the biggest month for new domain name creations we’ve seen in a while” with almost 49,000 new domain names registered.
However, auDA also reported that the overall registration of .com.au domain names fell due to a lower renewal rate for names registered in March/April of last year.
However, it’s too early to tell if this surge will continue.
It seems that the spike, yet overall fall in numbers of renewals, can be explained by the large number of people starting online businesses during the COVID pandemic because of all of the layoffs. Yet simultaneously many businesses seem to be letting go of unused domain names or narrowing their focus to save money.
DomainAgents stated:
“…budgets will certainly continue to face pressure as people and businesses continue to adapt. How domain name values move over the next year is difficult to predict, but right now the market seems strong.”
Post GFC years were some of the best for .com.au because you had renewal / renaissance in e-commerce
Same will happen again
Overall, .com.au registrations are down from this time last year; it’ll be no surprise to see a spike of expired domain names in April next year. (how much money spent on promoting this spike from auDA marketing fund, during a global economic meltdown?)
Also, next year is the first year for many to renewal their domains for 1-year (as opposed to the previous mandatory 2-year rule) I suspect that would also cause an increase of expired domains, especially during a protracted recession. (But hey, not that auDA is listening, until it hurts their back-pocket)
I think auDA might need to explore why lower renewal rate for names that were registered in March/April last year during “promotions from registrars” did not work to sustainably increase the total registration pool.
auDA suggests, it was a result of introducing the 1-year registration term in 2018 – therefore, my best guess is that the dip may have been a result of previous holders abandoning their renewals for domain registrations prior to 2018 (clean out crap domains) and or, those who were caught up in the Registrar marketing promotions did not want to pay the renewal cost on a crap domain that was either given away for free or heavily discounted.
https://www.auda.org.au/news/au-registry-reports-april-2020-now-available/