Monday, May 23, 2011

Is Domain Registration a Stock Market Predictor?

There were 94,549,028 registered .com domains at the end of April, 2011, according to HosterStats.com.

Looking back on prior years, here is how many domains were registered at the end of previous years:

2010: 91,164,993
2009: 83,586,300
2008: 78,361,107
2007: 70,745,010
2006: 57,543,658
2005: 43,303,414
2004: 32,390,225

There has been steady growth in the number of .com domains registered, about 10m a year on average, over the last seven years, and if this year's registration pace continues, we should hit 100m domains by year end.

During the last seven years, there have only been three months in which there was a decline in the overall number of registered .com domains: April 2007 (-3.65%), September 2007 (-4.01%), and October, 2007 (-.16%). Interestingly, this coincides with when the stock market was at an all-time peak, specifically it topped out in October, 2007, and then began to embark on a monumental crash.

Was the drop in .com domain registration signaling an impending stock market crash?

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