April 2005
You are currently browsing the articles from WhoisIreland Review written in the month of April 2005.
So how has .info faired as a gtld? A project here is looking at building a .info search engine/directory. But most of the sites checked so far appear to be coming soon or parked. The recent sales drive on .info added at least 1.5 million .info domains to the total as various registries offered free or automatic .info domain registration to their clients. The majority of these domains are parked and basically unused. The official estimate of active sites from the .info registry claims that there are approximately 400,000 active .info sites. Out of nearly 3.5 million .info domain registrations, that kind of utilisation is low. It effectively gives .info the same web footprint as a medium sized European cctld.
Tags: IrishBlogs, Domains, searchengines,Internet Statistics,.info
Written by John McCormac on April 26th, 2005 with comments disabled.
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The expected launch of the .eu tld could be a major problem for some cctld registries that have failed to move with the times. The main problems with growth on a cctld appear to be the cost and the complexity. The cost of .ie is about €50 Euros wholesale. The cost of a .com can be as low as €10. The .ie domain requires paperwork proving that the registrant has some entitlement to the .ie domain. The .com doesn’t. Therefore many companies and more importantly individuals take the cheaper .com route. This is a very important factor in the growth of a new top level domain.
The early days of a domain is riddled with speculative and dubious domain registrations. In the case of .info, one very dubious registration for a high profile webhosting site claims a trademark date of 1984. It can take up to four years for a new domain to settle down to a steady pattern of registrations and deletions. The .eu gtld may got through the same process. The natural losers with .eu will be the cctld registries that make it difficult and very expensive for individuals to register domains. The .eu would provide a more geographically attractive alternative to the blandly global identity of a .com domain.
One of the main claims to fame of these restrictive cctlds is that the cctld does have some element of proof and geographical dependency. But the .eu could equal that geographical argument. But it would not do so with the proof. However the registrant is often more concerned with cost than with domain marketing concepts.
Tags: IrishBlogs, Domains, WebHosting,Internet Statistics,.EU
Written by John McCormac on April 25th, 2005 with comments disabled.
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Over the past few weeks I’ve been working on a historical analysis of the perfomance of Irish hosters. The analysis so far covers Irish hosters from April 2005 to December 2003 and when competed will cover 2005 to 2000. Over that period, the number of Irish hosters has grown dramatically from approximately 500 to over 850. The market has shifted from being one dominated by the early market hosters (the Irish ISPs such as Eircom.net, IOL/Esat, Netsource) to one where the dedicated Hosting Service Providers (HSPs) have taken the major market share. Some of the large Irish HSPs are having growth problems - well not so much growth as the complete lack of it. They have been treading water with monthly increases barely offsetting their domain losses.
Other trends that are only apparent in the long view show Hosting365 dominating the low end of the market for domain name registration in Ireland. But a possible future competitor is emerging in the shape of Web Hosting Ireland - a company that has a very high growth rate over the period. The critical high end of the market is still wide open but some Irish companies such as Host.ie and ISPs seem to be concentrating on this more sustainable section of the market though Hosting365 has a significant market presence through its Rack365.com brand. The report on the Irish Hosting Business should be ready for publication in the next week or so and will be reasonably priced. All sales enquiries to salesdept@whoisireland.com
Tags: IrishBlogs, Domains, WebHosting,Internet Statistics
Written by John McCormac on April 15th, 2005 with 4 comments.
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Is there an aftermarket for previously owned .ie domains? The IEDR seems to think so. In an interesting move it has posted a selection of previously owned .ie domains that have been deleted from the deleted list of approximately 8500 deleted .ie domains. The list posted on the IEDR’s website contained many three letter .ie domains that have lapsed. While the full list has not been posted, the availability of short domains may trigger an aftermarket effect. Though it will be interesting to see what happens. The .ie cctld is still expensive compared to .com or .net. But just try getting a three letter .com or .net domain.
The normal proof of entitlement rules applies to any application for these domain names. Though there are some interesting deleted domains listed, the high number of generic domains tends to highlight the fact that generic domains are hard to market.
Tags: IrishBlogs, Domains, IEDR , WebHosting
Written by John McCormac on April 12th, 2005 with 3 comments.
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The April figures for the Irish hosting business show a market in the process of consolidation. That consolidation is happening at the expense of the smaller hosters and the ISPs. Esat’s and Netsource’s share of the market is continuing to fall. Sometimes you’ve got to wonder if the management of these companies realise their perilous position in the Irish hosting business. The Tier 2 hosters are continuing to grow and Hosting365’s dedicated hosting side, Rack365 was the biggest winner this month. It picked up a few hundred hostel related domains when a Gibraltar based hostel company moved its domains to Rack365.
Hosters Domains Market Share Market Segments
- Tier 1 24 – 25152 27.11% Traditional Early Market Hosters (ISPs)
- Tier 2 22 – 47469 51.17% Hosting Service Providers > 500 domains
- Tier 3 59 – 12223 13.18% HSPs 101 - 500 domains
- Tier 4 265 – 7426 8.01% HSPs/Web Developers 7 - 100 domains
- Tier 5 410 – 804 0.94% Individuals/Firms/Web Developers < 7 domains
- Tier 6 25 – 892 0.96% Educational And Government And Registry
The full April spreadsheet based report on the Irish Hosting Industry (approximately 158 pages) is available by subscription. Please contact salesdept@whoisireland.com if you are interested.
Tags: IrishBlogs , Domains, Internet Statistics , Webhosting
Written by John McCormac on April 12th, 2005 with comments disabled.
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