As you may have heard, we recently celebrated the second birthday of the .CO domain. And what an incredible two years it has been!  From startup to Super Bowl to nearly 1.4 million domain names registered by people and businesses in more than 200 countries worldwide – in just twenty-four short months!

Here’s a fun info-graphic we published that chronicles our growth and evolution – highlighting some of the key milestones and partners that have made our journey so great.

Secondary Market Growth
Sedo, the world’s largest domain name marketplace, recently published a Special Report that highlights the success of the .CO extension on the secondary market.  According to the report, .CO was the 9th most frequently sold TLD at Sedo in 2011 and is currently second only to .com in mean average sales prices.

You can read the full report here: .Co Market Report: A Successful Two Years for .Co May Pave the Way for New gTLDs.

When you read the report you’ll see why we are very excited about it. .CO is rapidly moving up in all the key metrics for secondary market success – and we're just getting started. Let's face it, most of our competitors have decades on us!

Domain Renewals
Another key indicator of the health and stability of any domain extension is the number of domain names that are renewed.  A high renewal rate indicates that people are excited about their domains and are either using them or plan to use and develop them in some way over time.  We’re thrilled to report that the renewal rates for .CO domain names are incredibly high.

For domain names acquired prior to our launch on July 20, 2010: we have a 97% renewal rate for all grandfathered names; a 96% renewal rate by brands who acquired domain names during the Sunrise period; and a 92% renewal rate for names acquired during the .CO Landrush, which includes a 98% rate for names sold during the Landrush auctions.

For domain names acquired after our launch, which represents the large majority of our domains, the renewal rates are also very strong. Domain names registered on the day of our opening for GA currently have renewal rates of 77% -- which is huge!  

The average renewal rate for all of 2011 was 68%, which by industry standards, is quite high for the first year of any new TLD launch.   Looking at our first batch of second renewals (-- or “second vintage” as we call it in the industry) – we are projecting that we will see renewal rates in the low 70%s for those domains – which is just fantastic news!  We won’t know the final numbers for another few weeks, as a large number of late renewals are still flowing in and being tallied; interestingly enough about 5% of renews occur 10-40 days after expiration.  

Development & Use
Beyond a fast growing registration base, a booming secondary market and strong renewals -- what I’m most proud of is the rich community of businesses, brands and blogs that are building the future on the .CO extension. Every single day we see more and more cool sites launching on .CO – and our community continues to grow strong.  If you want to see for yourself, please visit www.go.co.  I think you’ll be impressed!

If you have a .CO site you’d like for us to highlight, please let us know about it – we want to show you off!