Andrew Yang is Winning the Website Primary

Andrew Yang's debate surprise has apparently driven substantial traffic to his campaign website.

All-time traffic high on https://t.co/nYWdJYpqVC last night.  Must have been something I said.

— Andrew Yang (@AndrewYang) September 13, 2019

However, it looks like this traffic is not a new phenomenon.  Yang's website has been dominant among the Democratic campaign websites for some time.  Here are the Alexa worldwide traffic rankings for the top candidate sites, 90 days ago vs. today:

Yang2020 (.com) #22,715 -> #15,758
BernieSanders (.com) #25,754 -> #26,131
ElizabethWarren (.com) #40,779 -> #29,623
PeteForAmerica (.com) #33,185 -> #61,544
KamalaHarris (.org) #88,914 -> #69,548
JoeBiden (.com) #95,039 -> #77,889

Yang's campaign website is not only clearly leading the pack now, but it was also leading 90 days ago (before his recent surge).  Website traffic is probably a leading indicator for campaign strength.  Anyone surprised by Yang's recent surge in the polls might have seen this coming had they checked Alexa traffic rankings three months ago.

This is good news for Yang, and means more excitement, more fundraising, and more coverage in the months to come.  Driving traffic to a campaign website is only one part of a successful Presidential campaign, but it has become an increasingly important one.

Also, worth noting that Yang's site is the only top Democratic campaign site that includes numbers and letters.  It is also a relatively short domain at only 7 characters.

CCCC .com Registration Continues to Slow

As we noted recently, registration of 4 character .com domains (which has been on a tear for the whole year), finally has hit a rough patch.  Here are the updated numbers of registered 4 character .com domains:

8/27/19: 666,769
9/3/19: 664,324 (-2,445)
9/6/19: 661,110 (-3,214)

9/11/19: 656,408 (-4,702)

Registration has fallen by more than 10,000 in just a couple weeks.  This is still probably a blip, as registrations are still way up for the year.  But it does show some slowdown in this market.  Part of the reason for the decrease in registrations has certainly been the uptick in domains dropping.  It looks like the dropped domains have not been immediately scooped up, and registrations may take some time to recover.

Registrations for other types of short domains remain strong.  So this is likely due in large part to the abnormally high number of CCCC's dropping in recent weeks.  We will continue to monitor and report on registration rates.  

New Liquid Domains Industry Report

This is a big development for the short domain community.  Giuseppe Graziano from GGRG and LXME has been publishing a quarterly report on the short domain industry for some time.   I have read these quarterly reports with great interest, as I know many others have as well.

The quarterly reports have now undergone a significant makeover, and are now available on the web with crisp graphics and smooth navigation. 

Check them out here.

It is especially interesting to see development statistics, sales data, and comparisons with larger markets (like Bitcoin and gold) all in one place.  Great job Giuseppe!  I will continue to use your quarterly reports as a resource for understanding the short domain market.

Short Domain Registration Slows. Sign of Recession?

The past couple weeks marks the first time this year that short domain registration for both CCCC.coms and NNNNNN.com's has declined. 

Here are the numbers:

NNNNNN.com registrations:

8/27/2019 797,285
9/3/2019 796,353 (-932)
9/6/2019 795,370 (-983)

CCCC.com registrations:

8/27/19: 666,769
9/3/19: 664,324 (-2,445)
9/6/19: 661,110 (-3,214)

Is this an initial sign of a coming recession?  Perhaps.  But it also just might be a spike in drops, though.  A few weeks ago upcoming drops for CCCC.com's spiked to 5,039, they had been averaging under 2,000 for the rest of the year.  The number of NNNNNN.com's dropping hasn't increased substantially, but at the same time the decline in NNNNNN.com registration these past couple weeks has not been as stark as with the CCCC.com's.  So it might just be a blip.

Another hint that this may just be a blip is that LLLLL.com registration has continued apace.  5,341 more LLLLL.com's are now registered than were registered a couple weeks ago.  So it looks like people are still registering new short domains. 

Still, we will keep an eye on short domain registrations for any sign of a coming recession. 

Registration Update - Short Domains (4C, 5L, 6N)

It is often useful to check and see how close the "next" short domain type is to being bought out, and how the domain type is trending.

4 character (4C or CCCC.com's) are hot right now, and are being registered at a steady pace.  There are approximately 1.2 million 4 character domains in total.  They are still far from being all bought out (another 5-7 years perhaps), but here are some recent data points to give an idea of how popular they are:

April 16, 2018: 614,877 registered
August 19, 2019: 664,451 registered

6 number (6N or NNNNNN.com domains) are also being registered at a strong pace.  There are 1 million total, and these are the closest to being bought out (again), perhaps only a couple years until the 6N buyout:

April 16, 2018: 771,128 registered
August 19, 2019: 796,854 registered

As for five letter domains (5L or LLLLL.com's), these are far from being bought out.  There are 11,881,376 total of these domains, and we only have a couple data points here:

April 16, 2019: 3,257,718 registered
August 19, 2019: 3,156,254 registered

Registration's for 5L's actually declined in the last few months which was surprising.  We will keep a closer eye on these domains.  There is not much chance there will be a buyout of 5L's for decades (if ever), but it is still interesting to see the numbers as a bell-weather for short domain, and letter registrations, in general.

CCCC.com (4C) Domain Registration Update

There continues to be steady registration of 4 character .com names.  Here are numbers of registered names as of our checks dating back to February, 2008:

06/18/2019 - 636,418 (average of 342 registered/day since prior check)

04/16/2019 - 614,877 (average of 91 registered/day since prior check)
 
12/04/2018 - 602,771 (average of 190 registered/day since prior check)

01/11/2018 - 540,794 (average of 153 registered/day since prior check)

05/01/2012 - 300,000 (average of 55 registered/day since prior check)

02/01/2008 - 215,000

Average registered per day since January 2018 - 183.

If the current rate holds up, CCCC.com domains should be bought out around 2027-2028.   The data from 2012 and 2008 is not precise, we were using random sampling techniques back then, but it should be in the ballpark of the number of registered domains.  We will keep regular track of these, which is easier to do now with the handy tool that dofo.com provides which lets you see all registered domains of a particular type. 

Registration Data for (Very) Long Letter Domains

We've done this for numerics, and thought it would be interesting to see how registration rates look for longer letter domains.  Like much longer letter domains.  Here are the number of registered letter domains according to dofo for all strings of letters, from 1 letter domains up to 30 letter domains.  Only .coms were looked at.

What is interesting is that the number of .com letter domains peaks at 11-length (9.6 million registered).  Then registration rates start to fall, but not by much. 

Number of Letters		Number Registered
1		26
2		676
3		17,576
4		456,976
5		3,257,718
6		5,690,913
7		6,233,995
8		7,648,600
9		8,582,454
10		9,423,782
11		9,649,620
12		9,461,404
13		8,969,298
14		8,282,875
15		7,329,996
16		6,376,458
17		5,492,672
18		4,549,593
19		3,698,050
20		3,020,999
21		2,389,850
22		1,880,458
23		1,469,796
24		1,118,642
25		838,496
26		630,085
27		460,372
28		334,697
29		245,998
30		177,835