The internet keeps getting more crowded. Verisign's latest industry brief shows registrations across all extensions reached a record 411.6 million in the third quarter of 2026, with 9.9 million names added since the end of the second quarter. At the same time, professional beauty is posting some of the strongest numbers in the business. For salon groups, spa brands and booking platforms, those two trends point to the same question: when customers go looking for you, which address do they land on?
“The global beauty market, once again, proved its resilience in a challenging context”
Cosmetics Business
Pro Beauty Is Growing, and Moving Online
L'Oréal reported that like-for-like sales rose 7.2% to €11.6bn in the three months to September 30, and its professional products division posted 12.3% adjusted growth driven by hair care premiumisation. The company also said it is growing well ahead of the market in e-commerce and plans to keep investing in that channel.
For salon owners, this suggests that premium professional services and retail are where the momentum is, and that more of the buying journey is starting on a screen. Glossy reports that shopping journeys are now fragmented across social platforms, search and automated discovery tools, and that many shoppers arrive at brand pages with purchase decisions already formed. In our view, that makes the destination address more important, not less. If the research happens elsewhere, the final click has to go somewhere a customer instantly trusts.
.com Still Sets the Default
Even with fast growth in newer extensions, .com remains the anchor. Verisign data shows .com ended the quarter at 169.8 million registrations, up 6.3% year over year, while new gTLDs reached 56.6 million after growing 32%. Our reading: more choices have not displaced .com as the address people type by habit. Every new registration in a category like beauty adds competition for attention, which raises the value of the plain, exact-match name that needs no explanation.
Category names do change hands in the open market. A single day of DropCatch auctions totaled $89,200, and the list included UleBeauty.com at $1,215. For beauty businesses, this is a reminder that names are being bought every day by people who see their worth, and the clearest category terms rarely stay available.
The Cost of Not Owning Your Name
A recent dispute shows what can happen when a brand leaves gaps. Bear Archery won a UDRP case over TrophyRidges.com, which added only an s to its Trophy Ridge trademark. The panel found the site effectively impersonated the brand, and it even listed Bear Archery's own Indiana address as its contact. The domain was ordered transferred to Bear Archery, but only after a formal complaint.
Rules can also shift under registrants. In Australia, auDA proposed requiring a matching trademark or company name to keep .com.au and .net.au domains, then moved to exempt existing registrants while applying the rule to new ones. auDA says no final decisions have been made. For spa and beauty companies operating across borders, this suggests that a globally recognized .com held outright offers a steadier foundation than relying on country rules that may change.
What Decision-Makers Should Do Now
Our practical takeaways: secure the exact .com for your brand and your core service category, register obvious typos before someone else does, and point every campaign, booking link and partner listing to one trusted address. A name like SalonandSpa.com illustrates the idea, since it describes the whole category in plain words. As the beauty market grows and the domain count climbs, owning the clearest address is one of the few advantages that tends to hold its value over time, though no single asset guarantees results.
SalonandSpa.com names this whole industry, and it's available today.
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