Track Domain Trends With Verisign Grapher Tool

I recently learned about the DomainView Grapher Tool offered by Verisign, which allows people to track the number of .com and .net domain registrations for specific keywords by date. For example, and the one used in a Verisign blog post, you can see  just how many .com and .net domain names were registered in 2013 with the term “bitcoin” in them. Verisign operates the .com and .net domain name registries.

In addition to being a neat way to look at domain registrations, I want to share a few ways that I think  Verisign’s Grapher tool can be helpful. In my opinion, it seems to be more of a novelty, but here are a few ways that the tool can be used:

Track trademark domain registrations – Somewhat surprisingly, according to the tool, there are a ton of .com and .net domain names that were registered containing the trademarked term “Facebook.” I am sure some of these registrations belong to Facebook, but looking at the number of registrations, it’s no surprise that companies hate cybersquatters so much. A tool like this can help a company determine whether to file a few UDRPs or set a major precedent with a Lanham Act lawsuit.

See what is hot right now – The top of the grapher tool (and default) shows the top ten keywords that have been registered in .com or .net in the past 5 minutes. I don’t know how this would be beneficial, but it’s interesting to observe.

See what is hot over a certain time period – If a domain investor owns a great category defining domain name, the tool can help them see how many longer tail keyword .com and .net domain names are being hand registered.

Write articles about domain registrations – This is more of a point of interest for a blogger or journalist, but this tool allows people to gauge how many domain names with a specific keyword are being registered during a time period. Journalists seem to love sharing articles about how many “tragedy” domain names are registered after a major tragic event, and this gives the tools to do that.

I think it’s neat that Verisign