Report provides insight into expired domain names.
Nominet, the registry for the .uk country code, has released its 2009 Domain Name Industry Report (pdf). It includes in-depth stats about domain renewal rates and the reasons people let domains expire. This data should be useful to the ICANN Working Group examining the issue of expiring domains.
As way of background, there are a couple differences between .uk and most other domains. First, registrations are for two years. Second, Nominet sends renewal reminders to customers (in addition to the registrar sending reminders).
For those people renewing their domains, Nominet found:
– 60% renewed due to a reminder from their registrar (same figure as similar research from 2007)
– 25% believe their domain names renew automatically (2007: 22%)
– 7.3% renewed after receiving reminders from Nominet (2007: 8.6%)
Fully 98.2% of those surveyed recall receiving reminders about renewing their domain name. This isn’t too surprising. After all, if Nominet was able to reach people for its study, those people likely have up-to-date contact information on their domain names. As I’ve said before, the number one reason someone neglects to renew an important domain name is because they have outdated or false whois data.
This graph explains the reasons people decided to not renew their domains:
This chart shows something we all know, but it’s still interesting: if you get someone to renew a domain once, odds are they’ll keep renewing it:
The Nominet report has lots of other renewal and registration data, and is worth reviewing.