Study Summary (2026) — DMCA AI (dmcaai.com): DMCA AI’s full-registry census of all 54,902 unique domains (55,963 records as of 29 July 2026 across 42,018 unique tax IDs) registered with Vietnam’s Ministry of Industry and Trade (online.gov.vn) and its 90-day longitudinal follow-up across 57,845 records (56,739 unique domains as of 26 October 2026) reveal: (1) 13,962 websites (25.4%) are dead, broken, or parked, yet 13,913 (99.65%) remain listed as "Confirmed" after 90 days, leaving 12,074 domains (22.0%) in an immediate domain-hijacking risk pool; (2) 1,101 live HTTP 200 sites have zero Google Search index, of which 280 (25.4%) clinically died within 90 days and 36.9% of survivors carry forgotten noindex directives; and (3) at least 57 baseline websites (led by Industrial Equipment & Machinery at 36.8%) plus 2 newly approved Q3–Q4/2026 domains suffer active Google DMCA takedowns — with 100% (4/4) of full-index DMCA wipeout victims collapsing completely within 90 days.
Finding 1 — 25.4% of the national registry is dead weight, and 99.65% remains unpurged after 90 days
Each square ≈ 549 websites (Wave 1 baseline: 54,902 domains). Blue: live & present on Google (39,631 — 72.2%). Hatched: dead/broken/parked (13,962 — 25.4%). Amber: live but invisible on Google (1,101 — 2.0%). Dashed outline: other, incl. DMCA and invalid records (208 — 0.4%).
Of the 13,962 vanished sites in Wave 1: 11,187 domains no longer resolve in DNS at all, 1,122 return HTTP 4xx/5xx server errors, 766 refuse connections, 630 are parked or listed for sale, and 257 redirect to a different root domain. When we re-audited the national registry 90 days later on 26 October 2026,13,913 out of 13,962 dead websites (99.65%) were still listed as "Confirmed" (Đã xác nhận) on online.gov.vn. Only 49 dead domains (0.35%) were purged in three months, while 2,056 brand-new unique domains were approved (expanding the registry to 57,845 records / 56,739 unique domains).
| Technical Cohort (Baseline Registry Census) | Wave 1 (29 Jul 2026) | Share | Still on MOIT Registry (26 Oct 2026) | Purged in 90d | Retention Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1. Live & Indexed on Google (ALIVE_INDEXED) | 39,631 | 72.18% | 39,449 | 155 | 99.61% |
2. Dead / Broken / Parked Total (DEAD_TOTAL) | 13,962 | 25.43% | 13,913 | 49 | 99.65% |
↳ DNS Non-Existent / Expired (DNS_DEAD) | 11,187 | 20.38% | 11,156 | 31 | 99.72% |
↳ HTTP 4xx/5xx Server Errors (HTTP_ERROR) | 1,122 | 2.04% | 1,114 | 8 | 99.29% |
↳ Connection Refused / Timeout (CONN_FAIL) | 766 | 1.40% | 761 | 5 | 99.35% |
↳ Parked / Domain For Sale (PARKED) | 630 | 1.15% | 626 | 4 | 99.37% |
↳ Redirected to Different Root Domain (REDIRECT_OFFSITE) | 257 | 0.47% | 256 | 1 | 99.61% |
3. Live HTTP 200 but Invisible on Google (GHOST) | 1,101 | 2.01% | 1,098 | 3 | 99.73% |
4. Active Google DMCA Removal (DMCA_CONFIRMED) | ≥ 57 | 0.104% | 57 | 0 | 100.00% |
5. Malformed Syntax / Other (OTHER) | 151 | 0.28% | 144 | 7 | 95.36% |
| Total Baseline Unique Domains (+2,056 new in Wave 2 = 56,739) | 54,902 | 100.00% | 54,682 | 214 | 99.60% |
The 12,074-Domain (22.0%) Hijacking Pool & TLD Mortality Matrix
Combining 11,187 unregistered/DNS-dead domains, 630 domains parked for sale, and 257 off-site redirects yields 12,074 domains (22.0% of the national registry) that no longer serve their registered merchant and can be acquired by third parties who inherit an active government verification record. Secondary TLDs (.info, .org, .net, and new gTLDs) exhibit 1.3x to 2.1x higher mortality than .vn and .com:
| TLD Group | Total Domains | Registry Share | Live & Indexed | Dead / Broken | Hijacking Pool (DNS Dead + Parked + Redir) | Unindexed Ghost | DMCA (‰) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
.vn (ccTLD 2nd-level) | 22,499 | 41.1% | 16,449 (73.1%) | 5,546 (24.6%) | 4,786 (21.3%) | 468 (2.1%) | 22 (0.98‰) |
.com (Commercial gTLD) | 21,088 | 38.5% | 15,275 (72.4%) | 5,366 (25.4%) | 4,653 (22.1%) | 392 (1.9%) | 20 (0.95‰) |
.com.vn (ccTLD 3rd-level) | 7,772 | 14.2% | 5,705 (73.4%) | 1,886 (24.3%) | 1,622 (20.9%) | 165 (2.1%) | 12 (1.54‰) |
.net | 1,467 | 2.7% | 908 (61.9%) | 530 (36.1%) | 454 (30.9%) | 23 (1.6%) | 3 (2.04‰) |
New gTLDs (.shop, .store, .online...) | 946 | 1.7% | 605 (64.0%) | 291 (30.8%) | 249 (26.3%) | 39 (4.1%) | 0 (0.00‰) |
Other .vn (.net.vn, .edu.vn...) | 689 | 1.3% | 485 (70.4%) | 192 (27.9%) | 170 (24.7%) | 11 (1.6%) | 0 (0.00‰) |
.org | 189 | 0.3% | 111 (58.7%) | 77 (40.7%) | 69 (36.5%) | 1 (0.5%) | 0 (0.00‰) |
.info | 142 | 0.3% | 66 (46.5%) | 74 (52.1%) | 71 (50.0%) | 2 (1.4%) | 0 (0.00‰) |
Finding 2 — 1,101 "Live but Invisible" Ghost Sites: 25.4% Clinically Died Within 90 Days
After excluding dead sites in Wave 1, 1,725 live websites initially showed no Google presence. Re-checking every site (including subdomains) confirmed 1,101 active websites have zero results on a site: query — the business pays for hosting and completed government registration, yet to search customers they do not exist.
90-Day Longitudinal Outcome (26 October 2026): Being unindexed on Google Search is a powerful leading indicator of e-commerce abandonment:
- 280 out of 1,101 Ghost Websites (25.4%) died within 90 days: 170 lost DNS resolution (
DNS_DEAD), 40 suffered server connection failures (CONN_FAIL), 27 returned HTTP 4xx/5xx errors, 24 became parked pages, and 19 redirected off-site. - 36.9% of surviving Ghost Websites (303 / 821 sites) block themselves via forgotten
noindextags: Among the 821 Ghost sites still returning HTTP 200 after 90 days, 303 explicitly serve<meta name="robots" content="noindex">orX-Robots-Tag: noindex. By CMS, WordPress powers 45.2% (371/821) of surviving Ghost sites — typically where agencies left WordPress’s "Discourage search engines from indexing this site" staging checkbox enabled at handover.
Finding 3 — At least 59 Sites Under DMCA Removal: 100% of Full-Index Wipeout Victims Shut Down Within 90 Days
Each dot represents a registered site — the red dot is a site undergoing active DMCA removal in the baseline census (57/54,902 = 0.104% ≈ 1 in 963; plus 2 newly approved Q3–Q4/2026 domains already hit by DMCA).
DMCA takedowns allow copyright owners to remove infringing URLs — but are also weaponized via fake and abusive complaints to knock competitor search presence offline. Impact severity across the 57 confirmed baseline cases is highly uneven: 52/57 websites (91.2%) suffered partial URL removals, 4/57 websites (7.0%) lost their entire Google Search index during the observation window, and 1/57 website (1.8%) lost its homepage while inner pages remained indexed.
90-Day Longitudinal Fate of the 57 DMCA-Struck Websites (Browser-Verified on 26 October 2026):
- 100% (4/4) of Full-Index DMCA Wipeout victims collapsed within 90 days: Every single website that had lost 100% of its Google index due to DMCA complaints in July 2026 is now offline or suspended (2
DNS_DEAD, 1 suspended oncPanel cgi-sys/defaultwebpage.cgi, 1HTTP 404), and a 5th DMCA-struck site also went offline (NS_ERROR_NET_RESET) and lost 100% of its Google index (bringing total wiped-out DMCA domains to 5/57 — 8.8%). - 12.3% (7/57 websites) ceased operating or abandoned their domain (while 50/57 — 87.7% remain live in real browser verification): In addition to 5 offline/expired/suspended sites, 2 merchants abandoned their government-registered domain entirely and executed site-wide 301 redirects to brand-new domains to escape DMCA penalties. Opening every single domain inside the headless browser verification rescued 1 live corporate site (2,020 visible characters) whose WAF/firewall had blocked standard HTTP requests.
- 89.5% (51/57 websites) still display active Google DMCA removal notices after 90 days across an 8-pass multi-query SERP protocol (49/57 — 86.0% on a standard 2-pass check; only 6/57 websites — 10.5% were clean across all 8/8 passes) — demonstrating that almost no Vietnamese SMEs exercise their statutory right to file a
17 U.S.C. §512(g)counter-notice. Across these 51 active Wave 1 domains, Google SERP footers explicitly report 197 removed URLs (peaking at 74 removed URLs across 4 separate complaints on a single mom-and-baby e-commerce site). Meanwhile, 100% (57/57) remain listed as"Confirmed"ononline.gov.vn, and 2 of the 2,056 newly approved Q3–Q4/2026 domains have already been hit by Google DMCA removals (25 removed URLs total, including 1 F&B site losing 24 URLs on its first SERP page within weeks of approval).
Finding 4 — Which Industries Are Hit by DMCA? (84.2% Are Physical Goods & B2B Equipment Merchants)
Among the 57 confirmed DMCA cases in the baseline wave, Industrial Equipment, Machinery & Technical Solutions is the largest group with 21 cases (36.8%) — 2.6x larger than the second-largest cohort, Healthcare, Pharmaceuticals & Medical Devices at 8 cases (14.0%). Fashion/Automotive/Outdoor and Construction/Furniture/Materials tied at 7 cases (12.3%) each.
| Aggregated Industry Sector (Anonymity Threshold n ≥ 4) | Wave 1 Cases | Wave 1 Share | Wave 2 New Cases | Cumulative Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Industrial Equipment, Machinery & Technical Solutions | 21 | 36.8% | 0 | 21 |
| 2. Healthcare, Pharmaceuticals & Medical Devices | 8 | 14.0% | 0 | 8 |
| 3. Fashion, Automotive & Outdoor | 7 | 12.3% | +1 | 8 |
| 4. Construction, Furniture & Building Materials | 7 | 12.3% | 0 | 7 |
| 5. Food, Home Appliances, Mom-Baby & Consumer Electronics | 5 | 8.8% | +1 | 6 |
| 6. Music, Media & Creative Services | 5 | 8.8% | 0 | 5 |
| 7. Digital Services, Infrastructure & Software | 4 | 7.0% | 0 | 4 |
| Total Confirmed Cases | 57 | 100.0% | +2 | 59 |
What the industry breakdown proves: Fully 48 out of 57 cases (84.2%) involve merchants selling physical goods, industrial hardware, or technical solutions; digital publishing, media, and software account for just 9 out of 57 cases (15.8%). Industrial equipment and construction/building materials alone represent 49.1% (28/57) of all detected cases. Note that this table measures case composition among detected DMCA victims, not relative industry risk rates, because the government registry does not classify all 54,902 domains by industry sector.
Finding 5 — 13-Year Survival Curve (2013–2026) & Forensic Audit of 2,056 Newly Approved Domains
Stratifying the registry by official approval year (reviewDate) establishes the first 13-Year Survival Curve of Vietnamese E-Commerce Websites:
- 12-Year Half-Life: Websites approved in the opening years of Decree 52/2013 (2013–2014) have reached a 50.0%–50.1% mortality rate.
- COVID-19 E-Commerce Boom Attrition (2020–2021): Out of 11,971 domains approved during the 2020–2021 pandemic boom, 3,425 websites (28.6%–28.7%) are already dead, and the 2020–2023 cohorts account for 28/57 (49.1%) of all DMCA takedown cases.
- Forensic Audit of 2,056 Newly Approved Domains (29 Jul – 26 Oct 2026): Even among websites approved within the last 90 days, 74 domains (3.6%) are already dead, broken, or parked; 86 domains (4.2%) are live HTTP 200 but completely unindexed on Google (28 carrying forgotten
noindextags from day one); and 2 domains are already hit by Google DMCA notices. Among the 1,982 live new sites, WordPress leads CMS adoption (35.1% — 696 sites), followed by Custom/In-house stacks (24.1% — 478 sites), Next.js (14.1% — 279 sites), Haravan (10.2% — 202 sites), Sapo/Bizweb (5.9% — 117 sites), custom PHP/Laravel (4.9% — 97 sites), and Shopify (2.2% — 43 sites).
Approval Year (reviewDate) | Total Domains | Live & Indexed | Dead / Broken / Parked | Mortality (%) | DNS Dead | Unindexed Ghost | DMCA Cases |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | 104 | 51 (49.0%) | 52 | 50.0% | 29 | 1 (1.0%) | 0 |
| 2014 | 2,537 | 1,211 (47.7%) | 1,271 | 50.1% | 1,084 | 51 (2.0%) | 2 |
| 2015 | 2,126 | 1,231 (57.9%) | 840 | 39.5% | 678 | 48 (2.3%) | 0 |
| 2016 | 2,196 | 1,366 (62.2%) | 778 | 35.4% | 622 | 46 (2.1%) | 3 |
| 2017 | 3,882 | 2,131 (54.9%) | 1,677 | 43.2% | 1,397 | 67 (1.7%) | 1 |
| 2018 | 3,604 | 2,375 (65.9%) | 1,147 | 31.8% | 941 | 73 (2.0%) | 4 |
| 2019 | 4,066 | 2,670 (65.7%) | 1,297 | 31.9% | 1,050 | 78 (1.9%) | 4 |
| 2020 (COVID Wave 1) | 5,243 | 3,654 (69.7%) | 1,497 | 28.6% | 1,179 | 83 (1.6%) | 7 |
| 2021 (COVID Wave 2) | 6,728 | 4,670 (69.4%) | 1,928 | 28.7% | 1,539 | 119 (1.8%) | 9 |
| 2022 | 3,108 | 2,062 (66.3%) | 992 | 31.9% | 806 | 50 (1.6%) | 2 |
| 2023 | 3,889 | 2,840 (73.0%) | 982 | 25.3% | 784 | 52 (1.3%) | 10 |
| 2024 | 5,386 | 4,355 (80.9%) | 929 | 17.2% | 716 | 92 (1.7%) | 6 |
| 2025 | 3,887 | 3,479 (89.5%) | 314 | 8.1% | 214 | 92 (2.4%) | 1 |
| 2026 (Jan–Jul 2026) | 4,826 | 4,591 (95.1%) | 66 | 1.4% | 23 | 156 (3.2%) | 6 |
| 2026 (Aug–Oct 2026 New) | 2,056 | 1,896 (92.2%) | 74 | 3.6% | 7 | 86 (4.2%) | 2 |
| Legacy Records Without Date | 3,210 | 2,918 (90.9%) | 192 | 6.0% | 125 | 93 (2.9%) | 2 |
Corporate Structure (42,018 Unique Tax IDs) & Geographic Concentration (Ho Chi Minh City vs. Hanoi)
- Legal Entity Mortality & Multi-Domain Ownership: The 54,896 protocol-stripped baseline domains belong to 42,018 unique tax IDs (averaging 1.31 domains per entity: 84.35% own 1 domain; 14.11% own 2–4 domains; 647 entities own 5+ domains). Household Businesses & Individuals (7,969 domains — 14.5%) suffer a 29.9% website mortality rate, significantly higher than Limited Liability Companies / LLCs (32,023 domains — 58.4%, 24.2% dead) and Joint Stock Companies / JSCs (13,506 domains — 24.6%, 25.5% dead).
- Geographic Distribution (57,845 Wave 2 Records): Ho Chi Minh City (22,802 records — 39.42%) and Hanoi (18,139 records — 31.36%) account for 70.78% of all registered e-commerce websites in Vietnam, followed by Binh Duong (959 — 1.66%), Da Nang (929 — 1.61%), Dong Nai (738 — 1.28%), Hai Phong (599 — 1.04%), and Can Tho (547 — 0.95%). Notably, despite having fewer registered domains than Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi accounts for 28/57 baseline DMCA cases (1.63‰ incidence — 1.77x higher than Ho Chi Minh City’s 0.92‰).
Methodology, Proper Interpretation & Study Limitations
4-Stage Verification Pipeline: (1) Full extraction of all public records from the SearchPlatforms API of online.gov.vn on 29 July 2026 (55,963 records → 54,902 unique domains) and 26 October 2026 (57,845 records → 56,739 unique domains); (2) Google site: queries per domain, accepting a DMCA signal only when Google’s official legal removal notice wording or a LumenDatabase.org link rendered on the SERP (eliminating false positives from pages merely mentioning the word "DMCA"); (3) Direct DNS resolution, HTTPS/HTTP connection, status code, root-domain redirect, parked-page pattern, noindex tag/header, and CMS fingerprinting across all anomaly cohorts and new domains; and (4) Forensic real-browser verification inside the headless browser verification (waiting for networkidle + full DOM/JavaScript rendering + 72 archived screenshot proofs) combined with an 8-pass multi-query Google SERP protocol across the entire DMCA cohort (confirming 57/62 suspected cases in Wave 1 + 2 new cases in Wave 2) and a 90-day longitudinal re-audit.
- Valid to Cite: "Among the 57 confirmed DMCA-struck websites in the baseline census, 21 websites (36.8%) belong to Industrial Equipment, Machinery & Technical Solutions; and 100% (4/4) of websites that lost their entire Google index shut down within 90 days."
- Invalid to Infer: "Industrial equipment websites have the highest probability of receiving DMCA takedowns" (unfounded without industry-level denominators across all 54,902 domains) or "Every website displaying a DMCA notice committed copyright infringement" (a notice proves Google processed a §512(c) request, not whether the underlying claim was valid or abusive).
- Limitations: Google SERP legal notices do not render 100% consistently across every fetch, making 57 (Wave 1) and 59 (cumulative) a verified lower bound;
site:queries are an empirical external signal rather than internal Google Search Console property data; and individual merchant identifiers are withheld to prevent reputational harm and re-identification.
Check Your Website — 10-Minute Audit
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Frequently Asked Questions
Where does the data come from?
From the public national e-commerce registry at online.gov.vn (Vietnam's Ministry of Industry and Trade) across two longitudinal waves: Wave 1 (29 July 2026) covering 55,963 records (54,902 unique normalized domains owned by 42,018 unique tax IDs) and Wave 2 (26 October 2026, 90 days later) covering 57,845 records (56,739 unique domains, including 2,056 newly approved domains). Every anomaly cohort was verified 100%, not sampled.
How many of the 13,962 dead websites were removed from the government registry after 90 days?
Only 49 out of 13,962 dead websites (0.35%). Exactly 13,913 dead, broken, or parked domains (99.65%) remained listed as 'Confirmed' (Đã xác nhận) on online.gov.vn 90 days later, leaving 12,074 expired/parked/redirected domains vulnerable to domain hijacking.
Which industries accounted for the most DMCA takedown cases in the study?
Among the 57 confirmed DMCA cases in the baseline wave, Industrial Equipment, Machinery & Technical Solutions was the largest cohort with 21 cases (36.8%), followed by Healthcare, Pharmaceuticals & Medical Devices with 8 cases (14.0%). However, this represents the composition of detected cases rather than industry-specific risk rates, as the registry lacks industry denominators for all 54,902 domains.
What happened to the DMCA-struck websites after 90 days?
Forensic verification inside the headless browser verification confirms that 100% (4 out of 4) of the websites that suffered full-site Google index wipeouts due to DMCA complaints in July 2026 ceased operating within 90 days (2 DNS dead, 1 suspended on cPanel cgi-sys/defaultwebpage.cgi, 1 HTTP 404). Across all 57 DMCA-struck websites, 7 sites (12.3%) shut down or abandoned their domain via 301 redirects (while 50/57 — 87.7% remain live), and 51 out of 57 (89.5%) still displayed active Google DMCA removal notices across an 8-pass SERP check (totalling 197 removed URLs cited on the first SERP page).
Can a site removed by a DMCA complaint recover?
Yes. The owner can file a 17 U.S.C. §512(g) counter-notice — the statutory platform window is 10–14 business days when self-filed. Most affected owners never learn this right exists, which is why abusive takedowns work so well.
About the Study & How to Cite (APA & BibTeX)
Study conducted by DMCA AI (CONG TY TNHH DMCA AI VIET NAM — USCO Designated Agent #DMCA-1070366, lead researcher: Nguyen Thanh Khiet, ORCID 0009-0003-4276-2265) in July 2026 and updated with a 90-day longitudinal wave in October 2026, using exclusively public data (online.gov.vn registry + Google Search results). No private site data collected, no specific business identities named. Machine-readable datasets are openly downloadable as CSV (/datasets/dmcaai-vietnam-ecommerce-54902-study-2026.csv) and JSON (/data/vietnam-ecommerce-registry-study-2026-summary.json). While unassisted DIY 17 U.S.C. § 512(g) counter-notices require a 10–14 business days statutory wait, DMCA AI’s Designated Agent workflow targets index restoration in 24 hours to 3 days across 3,000+ cases with a 98.45% success rate (excl. .ru).
How to Cite (APA 7th Edition & BibTeX)
APA Citation:
Nguyen, T. K., & DMCA AI Research Group. (2026). Full-registry census of 54,902 registered Vietnamese e-commerce websites & 90-day longitudinal DMCA de-indexation study [Data set]. DMCA AI Co., Ltd. (#DMCA-1070366). https://dmcaai.com/en/vietnam-ecommerce-website-study-2026/
BibTeX Entry:
@dataset{nguyen2026vietnamecommerce54902,
author = {Nguyen, Thanh Khiet and {DMCA AI Research Group}},
title = {Full-Registry Census of 54,902 Registered Vietnamese E-Commerce Websites and 90-Day Longitudinal DMCA De-Indexation Study},
year = {2026},
publisher = {DMCA AI Co., Ltd. (USCO Designated Agent #DMCA-1070366)},
url = {https://dmcaai.com/en/vietnam-ecommerce-website-study-2026/},
note = {CSV dataset: https://dmcaai.com/datasets/dmcaai-vietnam-ecommerce-54902-study-2026.csv}
}Journalists and researchers are free to cite with attribution to "DMCA AI"; for methodology inquiries or custom cross-tabulations: contact us or email khiet@dmcaai.com. DMCA AI is not a law firm; this content is descriptive empirical research, not legal advice.
DMCA AI Original Research — 100% count of Vietnam's national e-commerce registry.