Domain name registration again in vogue

June 2004

Domain name buying is back in fashion once again--with registrations reaching levels last seen in 2000.

While domain name carpet bagging became a sport during the dot-com boom, as entrepreneurs snapped up URLs they hoped to sell for thousands of dollars, today's buyers are generally legitimate and simply want a Web address in order to publish a Web site.

More than 4.7 million new registrants joined the list of owners in the first three months of this year--an all-time high, according to VeriSign's latest domain name report.

The number of registrations for the first quarter of this year shows 21 percent growth year over year.

Generic top-level domains like .biz and .name are the poor cousins of the domain name game, with 8 percent of registrations compared with .com's 45 percent.