London: The shortage of familiar domain names such as dot-com and dot-co-dot-uk have seen domain registration drop but the rise of 'not-com' domains can open up new areas of the internet, says a new study.

The study, published in the Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, found that the lack of available high quality domains featuring popular names, locations and things could be stifling as much as a further 25 percent of the total current registered domains.