Domain Renewal Statistics – What Gets Dropped?

True story:

Me in 2019: “Next year, I’ll stop registering domains unless I KNOW for a fact I’m going to do something with them immediately.”

Me on 2nd January: “Oh shiny! I’ll take that domain please.” pic.twitter.com/ACuYeavtEs

— Stacey MacNaught (@staceycav) January 2, 2020

I register a lot of domains – sometimes with a plan, sometimes just because I like the look of something. 

Most get kept. Some are sold. Some get dropped (though I have a personal issue with allowing domains to drop that I should probably deal with).

I’m certainly not the only one with a domain hoarding habit and mine is pretty tame compared to that of others.

But as I registered my first new domain of 2020, I did get to wondering about the statistics relating to renewals and dropped domains.

Domain Renewal Statistics

Whoishostingthis.com released a study in December 2019 on this very topic.

They found:

• We keep just 30% of the domains we register
• 41% of domains are simply left to expire
• 29% are registered by other users

So the overwhelming majority of domains you register this year (unless you have the same digital hoarding problem I do) will end up expiring or in someone else’s hands.

With data provided by Whois XML API, Whoishostingthis.com then carried out research into renewal rates by TLD based on a sizeable sample as follows:

They found:

• The lowest renewal rates were for .cn TLDs, of which just 1.72% are renewed
• At the other end of the scale, 44.24% of .net domains are renewed, making .net the most renewed TLD

In all, this data set analysed 1,000,000 domains across the 8 TLDs, meaning over 702,000 of these where not renewed.

Here’s a summary of all their findings:

 My Own Stats

I took a little look at my own stats for domains that came up for renewal for me last year.

It’s a much smaller pool. But it seems I have a problem because of 32 domains that came up for renewal for me last year across a range of TLDs, I renewed 30. 

Must learn not to hoard domains…