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    GoDaddy's domain registration after SOPA: behind the numbers

    GoDaddy's domain registration after SOPA: behind the numbers

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    GoDaddy lost over 20,000 domain registrations yesterday, but those numbers were offset by similar gains in new registrations. It does not appear as if anti-SOPA action has affected the company greatly.

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    GoDaddy has been bearing the brunt of much of the anti-SOPA rhetoric on the web for the past few days, leading it to withdraw its support for the legislation. The action may have come too late to save its public image, but has it also cost GoDaddy subscribers? That's the story that's going around today, with The Next Web reporting numbers from DailyChanges showing 21,054 domains transferred away yesterday.

    However, on the same day that 21,054 domains transferred away, 20,034 domains transferred in. In fact, if you take a look at some of the historical data provided by DailyChanges, you can see that although transfers out of GoDaddy are slightly on the rise over the past week, taken as whole GoDaddy is still gaining more subscribers than it is losing — especially when you take new and deleted domains into account. Since December 21st, GoDaddy has had 130k new domains registered and 71k domains transferred in, compared with around 67k domains transferred out and 114k domains deleted, for a net gain of just over 20k domains. Taking just yesterday into account, GoDaddy's net change was positive 370 domains — basically nil, though a big drop compared to the net 20k domains it gained on the same date in 2010.

    Obviously this doesn't consist of a full statistical analysis, but the point is that there are more factors in play here than simply tracking the number of domains transferred away from GoDaddy. However, the only statistic you really need to remember is this: DailyChanges reports that GoDaddy has over 32 million registered domains, so even if that 21,054 number of transfers was an increase, it's a drop in the bucket compared to GoDaddy's big picture.

    A Reddit group is still planning a "Quit GoDaddy Day" on December 29th, so it's still entirely possible that the action could combine with the bad press to really affect the company's bottom line. However, to date, it doesn't look like GoDaddy is hurting all that much when it comes to domain registrations.

    We've reached out to GoDaddy for comment and will let you know if we hear back.