SnapNames' monthly "State of the Domain" report had predicted late last year that new and renewed domain registrations might begin to catch up with expiries early this year. But the edition of the report released this week says the paring of CNO domains that began six months ago continues, with domain-name giant Verisign absorbing most of the damage.

The shrinking of the domain-name market squeezes Verisign twice: as the operator of the registry recording all CNO addresses, and as the largest of all companies providing domain-registration services to consumers and businesses.

The loss of over 372,000 domains in March represents more than $2.2 million in annual fees - $6 per domain - that domain-registration providers pay Verisign's registry arm.

But SnapNames said Verisign's own domain-registration business was hit even harder, losing 622,000 domains through expirations or migrations to its registrar-competitors, some of which continued to increase their market shares.

Last month, SnapNames reported that the Verisign registrar had lost more than 767,000 domain registrations in February, a month that saw the entire pool of CNO domains drained of 565,000 addresses.

At the time, SnapNames said that drop likely represented the last purge of "promotional" domains that some registrars had given away to customers in hopes that they would pay for them when they came up for annual renewal.

But, Verisign surprised SnapNames in March with a purge of more than 600,000 domains in the final days of the month. And, in the first few weeks of April, the entire pool of CNO names was already down another 600,000, the company said.

The continuing domain-name drain hasn't helped Verisign's stock, which dipped 17 percent Wednesday with the help of a Wall Street analyst's downgrade. At just under $16.80 a share in mid- afternoon trading today, the stock is a long way from the $50 a share at which it was trading before the domain-name decline began in earnest last October.

Another big loser among registrars last month was Register.com, which saw the number of domains for which it was responsible drop by just over 92,000.

That drop was enough to kick the company from the No. 2 spot, which is now claimed by Canada-based Tucows, operator of the OpenSRS system through which it resells its own access to domain-name registries, including Verisign's.

SnapNames said Tucows ended March as the registrar for 2.76 million domains - an increase of nearly 37,000 - compared to Register.com's 2.75 million domains.

Verisign, which was once the only registrar for CNO domains, had just under 11 million domains assigned to that part of its business, representing a market share that dipped below 40 percent in March.

Snapnames said that other registrars that were major gainers in March included eNom and GoDaddy, which both have more than 730,000 domains and climbed by more than 73,000 and almost 76,000 respectively.

Reported by Newsbytes.com, http://www.newsbytes.com .