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How many .com domain names are unused?

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Re: How many .com domain names are unused?

#41

Post by techsupporter »

dsl wrote: post #11

Just because a domain has ads on it or no webserver, does not mean it is unused. I have quite a few domains I use for email and such that I park with ads. They make me $20-$30 a month and I still get full use of the domain for what I need it for. Edit: People are asking what I use. DomainAdvertising.com. When I originally signed up with them you had to have thousands of domains (which I have sold off), I have no idea…

> Just because a domain has ads on it or no webserver, does not mean it is unused.

Yep. I have two very old domains, obtained back when domains were a) free, b) referred to as "delegated" from hostmaster, and c) placed in service by pulling the Very Special Form(tm) from ftp.internic.net and filling it out and e-mailing it to hostmaster and hoping you didn't delete a stray space in there along the way thus causing the hostmaster-bot to yell at you versus delegating your requested name in two or three weeks.

I've had them for so long that they crop up in weird places and one of them has been my e-mail domain for over two decades. Neither has a web site or other "normal" services on it. Once or twice a year, I'll get an offer to buy the three-character one (I've replied to every single one with "sure, you can send the cashier's check to [address]" and none ever do). Also once or twice per year, I'll get either a nice e-mail asking for the other domain--it is a common word that some historical groups like to use--or a flame mail complaining that I'm "camping" on the domain and being mad that I won't hand it over.

Re: How many .com domain names are unused?

#42

Post by marcosdumay »

gohwell wrote: post #4
leowoo91 wrote: post #2

"There are currently 137 million .com domain names registered." But how many is regularly visited today by most of the population? A good 10k max?

Alexa can give you an idea of the most popular sites. https://www.alexa.com/topsites

Well, there are 500 on the top 500. I don't think Alexa goes low enough to answer the GP.

Re: How many .com domain names are unused?

#43

Post by GordonS »

banana_giraffe wrote: post #7

I'd be curious how many domain names are used, but not for the web or email. No idea how to measure this, and I'm sure it's tiny. For instance, I have a .io domain I use as my own little personal dynamic dns service since dyndns turned evil. The TLD doesn't do anything interesting, and any web pages served by the subdomains are done on nonstandard ports, so if this study scanned .io domains, they'd classify my domain…

I recently discovered Freenom[0], which offers free .ga domains - I think you need to manually reconfirm it once a year, but other than that, there doesn't appear to be any downsides. Perfect for personal stuff!

[0] https://www.freenom.com/en/index.html?lang=en

Re: How many .com domain names are unused?

#44

Post by techsupporter »

munk-a wrote: post #24
whttheuuu wrote: post #5

Domain renewals should be priced higher. $500/yr, $1000/yr, $5000/yr would prevent squatters.

I absolutely disagree, but I think it is reasonable for domain authorities of various gTLDs to incorporate company names into domain name rights a bit more - if your company is FooBar and foobar.com is taken you may get some legal advantage in any efforts to secure it, this could just shift the domain name squatting issue to a company name squatting issue though. And, I'm also making the assumption that we're fine wi…

> And, I'm also making the assumption that we're fine with pushing personal pages and other domain uses off on a different gTLD.

This is a sure sign of getting old, in the vein of "old man yells at cloud," but you can have my personal domain that's been registered in a common gTLD long enough for it to buy its own beer when you pry it out of my registrar's hands.

Yeah, it sucks to have come along at the end of the landrush and all of the good spots are taken. That's, sadly, life when it comes to scarce things like that. I sure wish I'd been alive in the 40s or old enough in the 80s to buy waterfront property in Ballard when it was cheap but that time has passed, too.

Re: How many .com domain names are unused?

#45

Post by jmts »

jchallis wrote: post #35

I'm shocked by the lack of porn on the Internet. Gambling appears to be a much more popular activity.

Though I have absolutely no evidence to support this, I suspect that gambling doesn't suffer the same, uh.. stamina issues, that porn probably does. I assume that the sustained stream of small amounts of currency would easily add up to more revenue for gambling than porn, resulting a larger market.

Re: How many .com domain names are unused?

#46

Post by dsl »

nsgi wrote: post #25
binarysolo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also interested in what you use to park your extra domains. I have a dozen or so domains of former/future ideas and would love to at least have them maintain themselves. :)

Something like Netlify would do the trick. Zero cost or maintenance once you set it up with AdSense code, and better than using some parking service that would probably want to keep some of the revenue. https://www.netlify.com/

Google has ended the "AdSesne for Domains" direct program. You have to use a parking company.

Just putting AdSense code up a bare domain is a good way to get banned.

Re: How many .com domain names are unused?

#48

Post by simcop2387 »

rootusrootus wrote: post #40
computator wrote: post #34

Can a domain name registrar register a domain name for themselves for free or for a minimal fee? What about Verisign -- if they registered ".com" domain names for themselves , who would they even pay since there is no one above them? Seriously, does anyone know the answer to this? I've never found an authoritative answer. I've wondered if domain name registrars are speculating in the domain name market themselves. Pe…

Wasn't godaddy or someone like them doing exactly that, a number of years ago? I seem to recall a situation where you'd go to their site and search for a domain, and if you didn't buy it, then the next day it would mysteriously show as no longer available, but purchasable.

Yea they'd abuse the 3 day grace period that was put in place to squat the domains that were searched. That let them temporarily lock up the domain and also announce to the world that there was interest in the domain, leading to more squatting.

Re: How many .com domain names are unused?

#50

Post by tedunangst »

hanoz wrote: post #39

We've got to the stage now where if you've got a handful of .coms sharing a server, they'd have to be pretty substantial sites before your hosting costs would exceed your domain renewal fees. That's one hell of a market failure.

Huh? $10/year doesn't buy all that much hosting.
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