{"id":8538,"date":"2019-12-17T09:18:49","date_gmt":"2019-12-17T14:18:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cscdigitalbrand.services\/blog\/?p=8538"},"modified":"2019-12-17T09:18:51","modified_gmt":"2019-12-17T14:18:51","slug":"holiday-shopping-events-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cscdbs.com\/blog\/holiday-shopping-events-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Holiday Shopping Events\u201411.11, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday eCommerce Domain Trends: Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
By David Barnett
Brand Monitoring subject matter expert<\/i> Share this post \n<\/a>\n<\/a>\n<\/a>\n<\/span>\n
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This is the second in a two-part series of articles looking at domain registrations associated with the 11.11, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday shopping events, following the introductory post published in early November.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the shopping season, over a\nperiod between November 5 and December 8, we monitored the number of new domain\nregistrations with names containing the strings \u201c11(-)11,\u201d \u201cblack(-)friday,\u201d\nand \u201ccyber(-)monday\u201d (with optional hyphens in each case).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We observed considerable activity over\nthe five-week period, with significant increases in the numbers of domains\n(over 20%, in the case of Black Friday domains) compared to the total\npre-existing at the start of the study period. Registrations also peaked close\nto the actual day of the shopping events, especially for Singles Day and Black\nFriday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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These data show that significant proportions\nof the Black Friday and Cyber Monday domains (20.5% and 31.5%, respectively)\nalso feature eCommerce-related keywords in their domain names, suggesting they\nhave been specifically registered to attract web traffic associated with internet\nusers interested in making online purchases across the period. In both cases,\nthe registration activity spanned an extended period of several weeks in the\nrun-up to the events, with the keywords \u201cdeal\u201d and \u201csale\u201d commonly used, as\nshown below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A smaller proportion of the 11.11\ndomains (under 5%) also feature English-language eCommerce keywords. Inspection\nof the domain names suggests that many of them may not even have been\nregistered with the 11.11 event in mind, and may simply be using \u201c1111\u201d as a\ngeneric string.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Similar to the trends seen in the set of\npre-existing domains considered in the previous study, .COM continues to\naccount for the majority of new registrations in each of these three cases, though\nnew generic top-level domains, such as .XYZ, .SITE, and .ONLINE are also\nsignificant, accounting for notable proportions of the registrations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other\nobservations from the sets of newly registered domains<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the domain names including\neCommerce-related keywords, many of the event-specific domains registered\nduring the monitoring period also include the names of known and trusted brands,\nas well as the names of online marketplaces. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While some of these may have been\nregistered by the brand owners to promote their own eCommerce holiday events, a\nsignificant proportion certainly were registered by third parties. These\nindividuals may be abusing the brand names to misdirect and monetize web\ntraffic, by diverting users to their own content via re-direction or sponsored\nadvertisements, or by offering the sale of counterfeit items. Amongst the brand\nnames seen to have been used in this way are: <\/p>\n\n\n\n