Recent Posts
- Taylor Swift applies for her .post domain
- .ad domains to go global soon
- Single-letter .com case back in court
- ICANN to slash costs as Verisign’s magic money tree dries up
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- .com still shrinking because of China
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- Alibaba, Name.com among new RDRS opt-ins
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- New gTLD lottery to return in 2026
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- D3 announces fourth crypto new gTLD client
- Donald Trump loses second UDRP case
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- ICANN insists it is working on linkification
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- Epik reveals who is running the company
- Epik gets acquired again! The plot thickens…
- Airline gTLD crashes and burns
- First chunks of new gTLD Applicant Guidebook drop
- Epik to reveal its owners soon
- Another crypto firm to apply for a new gTLD
- Monster and Royce are NOT involved in Epik?!
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- ICANN picks its first ever Supreme Court
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- ICANN approves domain takedown rules
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- First bits of new gTLD Applicant Guidebook expected next week
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- Dev releases free open-source TLD registry platform
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- Five more gTLDs get launch dates
- $10 million of ICANN cash up for grabs
- Almost 50,000 .ai domains sold in a quarter
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- Have your say on police domain takedown powers
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- Nominet to take over .gov.uk
No lockdown bump for .eu as domain base shrinks in Q2
The European Union ccTLD .eu did not see an overall benefit from the pandemic lockdowns that affected many of its member states in the second quarter.
Registry operator EURid this week said that its total domains under management for .eu was 3,606,143 at the end of June, down by 16,907 from 3,623,050 at the end of March.
The company blamed Brexit for the decline, as Brits will no longer be eligible for .eu domains after the political transition period expires at the end of the year and many are therefore being allowed to expire.
This has been EURid’s story for many quarters, with the exception of a discount-related Portuguese aberration in Q1.
The number of regs from the UK dropped by 16.6% year-over-year and 5.1% quarter-over-quarter, to wind up at 135,355.
But .eu did not see the lockdown bump experienced by many other registries and registrars during the quarter either.
New regs in Q2 were at 163,277, compared to 190,011 in Q1 and 164,906 in Q2 2019. It sold fewer domains, even as its peers reported significant increases in sales.
I expect this is fairly easily explained.
Anecdotally, much of the pandemic-related boost the industry has experienced has been due to bricks-and-mortar microbusinesses such as mom-n-pop retailers, bars and restaurants selling online for the first time and needing domain names to make the switch.
These types of registrants, serving a small local area, don’t need a TLD reflecting their membership of a vast trading union, and are probably better served by their national ccTLD or a descriptive generic, so .eu got overlooked.
When it comes to the lockdown bump, it appears .eu was the exception to the rule.
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