In a statement, the company noted that more than 70 million dot-com names have been registered and most one word domains are taken. Dotster Vice President of Marketing George DeCarlo said that all three-letter dot-com domains have been sold, and approximately 97,000 of the 456,000 four-letter names remain.
The dearth of available, easy-to-remember domains is forcing web entrepreneurs off the dot com suffix and into unconventional territory.
“The shortage of marketable domain names has led consumers to select alternatives that are difficult for their potential visitors to remember, or do not adequately describe the brands,” Dotster noted. “These domain names result in a lack of robust traffic to the site, confirming customers’ insecurities about the value of creating websites.”
Unprecedented growth in the dot-com domain sector has led to a boom in the growth of in other domain name extensions like .biz and .net.
“There’s definitely a shortage of usable domain names in .com,” Antony Van Couvering, of Names@Work, an Internet consulting firm in New York City, told the E-Commerce Times. “If you want to go to a different extension, there are plenty of names. But because people normally put .com at the end of whatever they hear, that’s what most people want to have.”
In the span of three years, from 2002 to 2004, the domain name sector grew by about 4 to 5 million newly-registered domain names. That figure doubled in 2005, and DeCarlo figures it will double again in 2006.
Country-specific domains are a good way to exploit the burgeoning market of users looking for new web properties. Many generic three and four letter names are available on these top level domains. In just the first hour of its availability, more than 300,000 .eu names were registered.
“We’re seeing healthy growth in the dot com and dot net names,” Jill McNabb, senior manager for VeriSign, told the E-Commerce Times. “To me, that’s evidence that domain name registrants are finding names that they want, and they’re registering those names. In addition, they’re renewing their names at a healthy rate, which, to me, is another indication that they’re pleased with the names they’re finding.”
McNabb notes that the renewal rate for .com domains is 76 percent, which is the highest ever.
“From a real estate standpoint, domains are only going to continue to increase in value, especially as the scarcity of names drives the value of existing domains up,” DeCarlo said.