Is the recent decline in .COM registrations a taste of what’s to come?

dot-com-registrations

Popular domain name blog The Domains wrote an article today about .COM registrations falling below 128 million after hitting the new high back in September.

Verisign is reporting that the number of .Com domain names in the Domain Name Base have fallen below 128 Million. Back in September of this year we reported the number of .com domain name had broken through the 128 million mark for the first time. (Source – The Domains)

Now I don’t think this is any cause for concern, and I personally don’t think this represents any kind of trend. The article goes on to say that Verisign typically sees very strong numbers in Q4 so it’s definitely a real possibility that registrations will go back over 128 million by the end of the year. Still it does make you stop and wonder if the new domain name extensions are starting to have a meaningful impact on .COM registrations.

Just to be clear, I don’t think this has anything to do with the value of .COM. I still think .COM is the most valuable extension out there hands down and likely will be for a very long time. However it’s not hard to imagine that we’re moving into a time where someone looking to register a new domain now looks beyond .COM more so than they had ever done in the past.

Is this a taste of what’s to come or just a blip in the radar? What do you think?

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton