Out of all .COM domains registered, how many are owned by Domain Investors?

I had an interesting conversation earlier this week and was asked a question that I didn’t know the answer to…but wish that I did. The question was, as the title of the post already gave away, out of all the .COM domains registered, how many are owned by Domainers/Domain Investors/Speculators?

There was a blog post in January that took a sample of 100,000 domain names and came to the conclusion that 30% of domains are owned by Domain Investors…but I’m not sure I buy this.

While I’d love to think that as Domainers we have almost a third of the .COM domains under our control, I think that estimate is way off and the number is likely a whole lot lower.

That being said, I don’t have the data, nor have I spent any time doing the research required to get the correct answer. So I thought I’d throw it out to the community and my readers to see if someone out there does have something a bit more conclusive.

If it does turn out that Domain Investors own a third of the .COM domain names then it sure seems like Verisign would be incredibly involved in the Domaining world and setting policies that make Domainers happy. However from what I can tell, Verisign isn’t actually all that fond of Domainers given that they said the following last year:

“Flipping domain names or warehousing them to create scarcity adds nothing to the industry and merely allows those engaged in this questionable practice to enrich themselves at the expense of consumers and businesses.” (Source – Official Verisign Blog)

So I hand the microphone over to you. How many .COM names are owned by Domain Investors? Could it be as high as 30%? I want to hear from you, comment and let your voice be heard!

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton