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.com could return to growth this quarter
Kevin Murphy,
February 21, 2025, 05:47:44 (UTC),
Domain Registries
Verisign might have some better news for investors and analysts when it delivers its first-quarter financial results — it looks like .com might have turned a corner and returned to growth.
The TLD has added over 540,000 domains to its zone file between the start of the year and February 20, a little over halfway through the quarter, according to the numbers Verisign posts on its web site.
While Q1 has historically been seasonally strong, in the same period of 2024 .com was down by over 63,000 names. Over the whole of 2024, .com’s zone lost 3.7 million domains.
The company recently introduced some registrar marketing programs that CEO Jim Bidzos earlier this month said he was encouraged by. Several registrars have been spotted selling .com first-years for as much as 50% off the regular wholesale price.
Two big registrars — GoDaddy and Squarespace — kicked off expensive ongoing campaigns advertising their web site building services at the February 9 Super Bowl broadcast in the US.
Since the broadcast, .com is up by 186,000 names.
Verisign is currently predicting its domain name base across .com and .net will shrink by between 2.3% and 0.3% for the full year.
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