Website Usage In .CO – July 2011

These are the results of the HosterStats.com July web survey of 515,460 detected .CO websites. Measuring and categorising website usage in TLDs is one of the things that HosterStats.com does regularly. The algorithms used to determine categories are designed to rapidly build search engines.  This means that the categorisation is more accurate than what often passes for TLD website usage “analysis”. The survey was carried out over the 22nd and 23rd of July 2011.

HosterStats.com .CO Website Survey – July 2011

• Category – Websites – Percentage of Websites
• Active/Unclassified: 66,747 – 12.9490%
• Brand Protection:  10,267 – 1.9918%
• Possibly Compromised:  42 – 0.0081%
• In Page Redirect: 3156 – 0.6123%
• External TLD Redirects (non-exact): 42,374 – 8.2206%
• Forbidden/Not Found:  7,000 – 1.3580%
• Holding Pages: 71,533 – 13.8775%
• In-Site Redirect: 17,118 – 3.3209%
• Dropped/Expired: 3,158 – 0.6127%
• Reserved Premium Domains: 3,559 – 0.6905%
• External TLD Redirect (Exact Match): 18,117 – 3.5147%
• Duplicate Content Sites: 232 – 0.0450%
• PPC Parked: 250,157 – 48.5308%
• Redirects (uncategorised): 1,302 – 0.2526%
• For Sale/Rent: 5,508 – 1.0686%
• Unavailable: 837 – 0.1623%
• Generic Adult: 115 – 0.0223%
• In Zone Redirects (to other .co sites): 14,238 – 2.7622%

This is a limited survey of 515,460 responding .CO websites. It does not cover the entire .CO ccTLD zone. However the general trends are apparent. The detected websites have trends that are similar to those found in gTLDs such as .INFO and .BIZ. For what is effectively a repurposed ccTLD marketed as a gTLD in its first year of operation, it is doing very well.

In terms of marketing, the .CO Registry did everything right from getting GoDaddy.com as its flagship registrar to getting a number of very high profile internet companies to register single letter .co domain names. Such has been the effectiveness of the .CO registry’s marketing that if it was marketing the .US ccTLD, the .US ccTLD domain count would be in the tens of millions by now.

Development in a new TLD takes time. It can be expensive and most web developers do not scale well horizontally. With any new TLD launch, there will be an element of speculation were people register domain names with the intent of selling them on for a profit or monetising them with PPC advertising. However some registrars now automatically park unused and undeveloped domain names on their own PPC parking pages. Sedo provides such a PPC parking service. Godaddy has its own parking program and its free page parking IP accounts for a lot of the PPC parked .co domain names. This is not surprising given the Godaddy.com’s position as the flagship .CO domain name registrar. In the next year, the level of development of .CO websites should increase and this is the greatest challenge for the .CO registry. It is good at maintaining the prominence of the .CO ccTLD but it also has to emphasise the the importance of development. The relatively high price of .CO registration and renewal fees has ensured that the level of domain name speculation is somewhat lower than in other recently launched TLDs.

Brand Protection

Brand protection registrations are a feature in all new TLDs as trademark owners typically register their domain names in these new TLDs. Small businesses also register their domains in new TLDs and while they may not have trademarks, the fact that they will do so indicates that they consider the new TLD, in this case .CO, to be important enough to warrant such a registration. But the hidden aspect is the number of .co websites in this survey that are Exact Match redirects to other TLDs (18,117 or 3.51%). These are .co websites that are forwarded to the main websites of the registrants.  The other External TLD redirects are often keyword type domains redirecting to the registrant’s main website in other TLDs.

Holding Pages

These are unused domains which are often just the registrar’s or hoster’s generic landing page for undeveloped domain names. Unused blogs, (where not even the initial “hello world” post has been changed), are also included in this category. While the larger registrars will use PPC parking programs to monetise their unused domain names, smaller hosters and webdevelopers often leave blank or “coming soon” notices on these pages.

Dropped/Expired Domains

These are the .CO domain names that have not been renewed and are in their supension phase. The nameservers for these domain names have been changed and the website now points to a generic suspension webpage. As the July websurvey was carried out just days after the anniversary of the .CO Landrush in July 2010, the number is low. It will increase over the next month. Some new TLDs can have a renewal rate of approximately 70% on the first Landrush Anniversary.

Reserved Premium .CO Domains

These are premium domain names that have not been released by the .CO registry. They are typically high value keyword type domain names or short (two letter) domains. They will be released for sale or auction in the future.

PPC Parking

Pay Per Click parking is an established feature of most TLDs and sometimes domain names are purchased purely for their ability to generate revenue from PPC advertising. Due to registry and hoster PPC parking of unused domain names, the PPC percentage for .CO websites in this survey may seem high. Less accurate figures quoted in some registry reports underreport the true level of PPC parking because they simply don’t measure it properly. The PPC model has changed dramatically in the last ten years. Detecting PPC parked websites involves analysing each site for the signatures of PPC activity rather than just relying on known PPC parking IPs. Many PPC websites are not on PPC IPs or nameservers of known PPC operations.

Tags: .CO, ccTLD, dotCO, Usage, WebDevelopment