New gTLDs blamed as .pl starts to shrink
Polish ccTLD .pl has lost over 125,000 domains in the last year, a change of growth trajectory blamed partly on new gTLDs.
NASK, the registry, released its third-quarter report in English today. It’s overflowing with more statistics than you could possibly need about the TLD’s performance.
The headline is that .pl is on the decline. On NASK’s web site, it reports registrations as of today are down 128,671 on the last 12 months.
It has 2,577,566 active domains in total today, 2,592,014 at the end of September, about three quarters of which are direct second-level registrations.
It’s one of many ccTLDs to have started to feel the pinch over the last few years. Increased competition, spurred by the expansion of the gTLD space, has been fingered as a likely culprit.
In the report’s introduction, NASK director Wojciech Kamieniecki wrote:
Temporary slowdown of the dynamics of the .pl domain market, observed from the beginning of the year — decrease in the number of new registrations — should be perceived in the light of extending the selection of attractive names as well as a growing number of new generic domains and increase in competition in the global domain market.
The renewal rate overall was 62.22%, a slight increase on 2016 but still on the low side for an established TLD. However, if you exclude third-level registrations (under .com.pl and .net.pl for example) the rate was a much more respectable 76.37%.
There were 203,898 new domains registered in the third quarter.
The vast majority — 93.96% — of current .pl domains are registered to Polish registrants, with registrants from Germany, the UK and the US also contributing to the total.
The full Q3 report can be downloaded here (pdf).
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