Cumulative reports on domain names

The value of cumulative data in the domain business?

The amount of data that can be possibly generated, collected or processed with computers is well beyond our imagination. In high-performance computing applications, such as, e.g. in weather forecast calculations, the size of data sets is of order of petabytes. But what are we interested in, after all, when looking at a weather forecast? A few lines of information describing what the weather will be like in the next few days. Or, maybe, a weather map which is a file still not bigger than an average family photo. This illustrates that in many cases we need a huge amount of data, but the data size of the real information we need to get out of it is really small. Of course it does not mean that we do not in fact get very much information from this small-sized result dataset.

In the domain business, the data available on domain registrations, when considered globally and, especially, in time, can also reach at the domain of big data. But do you need all these data? Frequently the answer is no.

A domainer buying and selling domain names, for instance, can be interested in global trends to make well established business decisions or for domain appraisal. For instance, characterize the dynamics of domain registrations in a given top-level domain or country. Investigate the penetration of certain registrars on the market. Relate domain registration trends to global business events affecting them. Analyze statistics of domain names and registrars. And many more interesting questions can be posed which can all be answered by processing an enormous dataset, yet resulting in a few numbers or data records, which are, on the other hand, extremely informative.

And these questions are not only relevant for domainers. They bear importance in marketing research, branding, IT security, and even in scientific research. Which registrar to choose in order to establish a well-established brand? As a registrar, who are the main competitors and how does the competition behave in time? Are there any business gaps worth filling? Is there a new large-scale threat preparing? This can possibly be predicted, e.g. from the behavior of domain registrations as phishing attacks require a significant amount of short-lived domains. The entrepreneurship of a country or a region is also reflected in the behavior of domain registrations. Altogether it is apparent that cumulative data of domain names can be very useful.

But in order to obtain this information, a huge amount of data has to be collected and processed, which is an activity facing many obstacles. To name the most relevant ones:

• To process big data, you need a significant hardware infrastructure. The amount of global domain registration data is of order of several terabytes even in the case of a snapshot, not to speak about storing and processing historic data. You need a lot of powerful computers to do this, which is a significant investment and the operation costs are also not negligible.
• Obtaining and processing domain data, e.g. from the WHOIS or DNS ecosystem requires a significant know-how. You have to either hire experts or do a lot of custom software development in a rather special domain.
• You will run into a lot of technical and legal obstacles. For instance, WHOIS is one of the primary sources of domain data. It is a global distributed database, and many operators of WHOIS servers pose limitations of the amount of WHOIS queries that can be performed in a given time period. As domain data typically contain personal or company data, when collecting and processing them, you need to respect data protection regulations which can be very complex as they can differ for countries, TLDs, etc.

And even if you overcome these difficulties, from the point of view of information you make several efforts in vain. In many cases, for instance, you are not at all interested in individual domains, nor the personal or company data involved in the detailed datasets, which can generate a lot of legal issues (just consider the dramatic consequences of the European Union’s new General Data Protection Regulations). Many global trends can be well identified without this sensitive information.

How much easier life would be, if you could obtain just the very information you need…

The solution: domainnamestat.com

So it is time now to take a look at domainnamestat.com, the page where you probably have found this blog. If you take a look, it is likely that you find a lot of information you need, for free. There are domain registration statistics broken down for countries, top-level-domains, registrars, etc. The data are available from 2015 on, with a monthly resolution.

How is this possible? Domain Name Stat, LLC is a well-established company specialized in collecting and processing domain data with several years of experience. We have everything needed for producing accurate domain statistics and other cumulative data:

• Detailed and complete domain data (WHOIS databases, DNS zone files, etc., which can also be purchased if you are really in the need of detailed data),
• Proper infrastructure to collect, maintain and provide these datasets, and
• High level of expertise in collecting, processing, and analyzing these data.

Hence, we are in the position to provide this information with high reliability, for free. In addition, there are no sensitive data involved on individual registrants. Just the statistics you need.

So maybe you have found the data important for you on this webpage. But what if you need them in a programmed environment, e.g. for processing with your own analytics software. The good news is that you do not need to implement a scraper for the page. The data are also available through RESTful APIs.

And what if you need statistics in a different structure, or with a different resolution, etc. In addition to the data you can find easily at domainnamestat.com, we also offer the generation of custom reports based on the detailed and complete databases behind.

If you are interested in the API or some custom reports, please do not hesitate to contact us at service.desk@domainnamestat.com.