Latest news of the domain name industry

Recent Posts

These two ccTLDs drove two thirds of all domain growth in Q2

Kevin Murphy, August 30, 2019, 05:26:45 (UTC), Domain Registries

The number of registered domain names in the world increased by 2.9 million in the second quarter, driven by .com and two ccTLDs.
That’s according to the latest Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief, which was published (pdf) overnight, and other data.
The quarter ended with 354.7 million domains. Verisign’s own .com was up 1.5 million over Q1 at 142.5 million names.
ccTLDs across the board grew by 1.9 million names sequentially to 158.7 million. Year-over-year, the increase was 10.5 million domains.
The sequential ccTLD increase can be attributed almost entirely to two TLDs: .tw and .uk. These two ccTLDs appear to account for two thirds of the overall net new domains appearing in Q2.
Taiwan grew by about 600,000 in the quarter, presumably due to an ongoing, unusual pricing-related growth spurt among Chinese domainers that I reported in June.
The UK saw an increase of roughly 1.3 million domains, ending the quarter at 13.3 million.
That’s down to the deadline for registering second-level .uk matches for third-level .co.uk domains, which passed June 25.
Nominet data shows that 2LDs increased by about 1.2 million in the period, even as 3LDs dipped. The difference between this and the Verisign data appears to be rounding.
Factoring out the .uk and .tw anomalies, we have basically flat ccTLD growth, judging by the DNIB data.
Meanwhile, the new gTLD number was 23 million. That’s flat after rounding, but Verisign said that the space was actually up by about 100,000 names.
Growth as a whole was tempered by what I call the “other” category. That comprises the pre-2012 gTLDs such as .net, .org, .info and .biz. That was down by about a half a million names.
.net continued its gradual new gTLD-related decline, down 200,000 names sequentially at 13.6 million, while .org was down by 100,000 names.
The overall growth numbers are subject to the usual DNIB-related disclaimers: Verisign (and most everyone else) doesn’t have good data for some TLDs, including large zones such as .tk and .cn.

Tagged: , , , , , ,

Comments (10)

  1. Snoopy says:

    Only .com is seeing real growth. It is now sucking all the air out of the room. The world only needs one global extension.

    • Snoopy Lover says:

      Ketchup is the real leader in condiments put on hamburgers and hot dogs, which are the read leaders of food eaten by people around the world. It is sucking the air out of kitchens everywhere. The world only needs one condiment.

    • The problem for new gTLDs is that the COM/ccTLD axis in most mature country markets is now around 80%. The new gTLDs are competing with the legacy gTLDs and some of the adjacent market ccTLDs like .EU etc for that remaining 20%. The .COM is helped by the fact that it is the de facto US ccTLD (the .US being the de jure US ccTLD).

  2. Rubens Kuhl says:

    Ivan,
    I don’t have that information, would be interesting indeed to look at such an angle.

Add Your Comment