Verisign: 1.7 million domain industry growth in Q2

The DNS grew by 1.7 million domains in the second quarter, according to Verisign’s latest Domain Name Industry Brief.

The quarter ended with 356.6 million domains across “all” TLDs, the company said. That’s up 1.7 million on the quarter and 4.3 million on the year.

I put “all” in quotes because it turns out Verisign hasn’t been including over a dozen TLDs in its calculations in previous reports.

Inexplicably, it hasn’t been counting 10 pre-2012 gTLDs — .aero, .asia, .cat, .coop, .gov, .museum, .pro, .tel, .travel and .xxx — for which zone files have been readily available for years. It’s also added six small ccTLDs to its calculations.

The upshot of this is that while a comparison with the Q1 DNIB would suggest growth of 2.6 million domains, it’s not, it’s just 1.7 million.

The report shows that both .com and .net shrunk in the quarter — 161.3 million versus 161.6 million and 13.1 million versus 13.2 million.

New gTLDs and ccTLDs were left to pick up the slack. Total ccTLD names was up 1.1 million to 137 million and total new gTLD domains was up 0.8 million to 28.1 million.

Domain universe grew 1% in Q1

There was a 1% increase in domain names under management worldwide in the first quarter, compared to Q4 2022 and Q1 2022, according to Verisign’s latest Domain Name Industry Brief.

The period ended with 354 million names across all TLDs, according to the report, an increase of 3.5 million, the report says.

ccTLDs did most of the heavy lifting, up by 2.6 million names or 2% sequentially to 135.7 million at the end of the first quarter. The growth figures correct for an error in the Q4 report.

Verisign has its own .com recovering, having dipped last year, now up by 1.1 million names sequentially to 161.6 million. Sister TLD .net was flat on 13.2 million.

New gTLDs dipped by 200,000 names to 27.3 million, a 0.6% decrease quarter-over-quarter, but were up by 900,000 or 3.6% compared to a year earlier, the DNIB states.

.com was a drag on the industry in Q4

The .com gTLD was a growth drag on domain name registrations in the fourth quarter, if the latest figures in Verisign’s Domain Name Industry Brief are to be believed.

The industry closed out 2022 with 350.4 million domains all TLDs that the DNIB tracks (which excludes Freenom’s free ccTLDs), up half a million in the quarter and 8.7 million over the year.

But that was despite Verisign’s own .com, rather than due to it. The DNIB has .com down from 160.9 million to 160.5 million. Sister TLD .net was flat at 13.2 million.

It was left to new gTLDs and ccTLDs to pick up the slack.

ccTLDs accounted for 133.1 million names, up 700,000 sequentially and 5.7 million over the year. New gTLD registrations were up 100,000 sequentially and 2.7 million over the year.

A big driver in ccTLDs was Australia’s .au, where the launch of direct second-level registrations added hundreds of thousands of domains and let the ccTLD kick .xyz out of the top 10 TLDs by volume.

But the report has a pretty big discrepancy that could throw out the ccTLDs number, I believe. For some reason the DNIB has .eu increasing by 300,000 names to 4 million in Q4, which flies in the face of the registry’s own numbers, which have it basically flat at 3.7 million.

New gTLDs grow in China as .cn regs slide

China-based registrations of .cn domains decreased in the first half of last year, while new gTLD swelled to pick up the slack, according to the local registry’s semi-annual report.

CNNIC published the English translation of its first-half 2022 statistical report in December, showing a steep decline in .cn regs, from 20,410,139 at the end of 2021 to 17,861,269 at the end of June last year.

These appear to be registrations made by registrants based in China. Verisign’s Domain Name Industry Brief for Q2 2022 shows .cn at 20.6 million.

While .cn slumped, new gTLDs saw an uptick of almost a million names in China, from 3,615,751 domains to 4,590,705 over the six months. New gTLDs accounted for 13.6% of all China-registered domains, the CNNIC report says.

The report also shows that the number of Chinese-registered .com names dropped by about half a million, to 10,093,729 from 10,649,851, over the period.

The full report can be viewed here (pdf).

Domain universe shrinks again: .com and .cn down, .au up

The number of registered domain names in the world shrank again in the third quarter, with mixed results across various TLDs, according to Verisign’s latest Domain Name Industry Brief.

There were 349.9 million names across all TLDs at the end of September, down 1.6 million sequentially but up 11.5 million compared to Q3 2021, the DNIB states.

The industry has downsized in every quarter this year, judging by Verisign’s numbers.

The company’s own .com, suffering from post-Covid blues, macroeconomic factors and (possibly) pricing issues, dragged the overall number down in Q3 by 200,000 domains, ending with 160.9 million.

But China’s .cn was hit harder, ending the period down from 20.6 million to 18 million. As I pondered in September, this may be due to how Verisign sources data.

Australia’s .au benefited from the launch of second-level availability, which boosted its number by 400,000 domains, ending with 4 million and overtaking .fr and .eu to become the seventh-largest ccTLD.

The ccTLD world overall shrunk sequentially by 1.7 million names but grew by 5.7 million on the year to end the quarter with 132.4 million.

New gTLDs ended with 27.3 million names, up 300,000 sequentially and 3.8 million year over year.

.com and .net are the drag factor on domain industry growth

Verisign’s own gTLDs .com and .net slowed overall domain industry volume growth in the second quarter, according to its latest Domain Name Industry Brief.

June ended with 351.5 million registrations across all TLDs, up 1 million sequentially and 10.4 million year-over-year.

Growth would have been slightly better without the drag factor of .com and .net, which were down 200,000 domains each sequentially, as Verisign previously reported in its Q2 financial results. There were 161.1 million names in .com and 13.2 million in .net.

The ccTLD world grew by 700,000 names sequentially and 2.6 million compared to a year earlier, the DNIB states.

New gTLD names were up by the same amount sequentially and 4.1 million year over year, ending the quarter at 27 million.

.xyz kicks France out of the top 10 TLDs — Verisign

Verisign is reporting that the total number of registered domains worldwide topped 350 million in the first quarter, under its new reporting methodology.

The company’s latest Domain Name Industry Brief states that there were 350.5 million names across (almost) all TLDs, up by 8.8 million or 2.6% compared to the end of 2021 or 13.2 million (3.9%).

It’s sequential growth well beyond the 3.3 million increase reported in Q4, but the first quarter of any year is usually seasonally strong.

It’s the second DNIB that excludes Freenom’s collection of free TLDs, notably .tk, making comparisons beyond what Verisign itself calculates challenging.

Verisign’s own .com was up from 160 million to 161.3 million domains over the period, while .net was flat at 13.4 million.

Total ccTLD names were up 6 million or 4.7% sequentially to 133.4 million and up 3.1 million or 2.4% year over year.

The top 10 TLDs saw a new entry, with XYZ.com’s .xyz taking the tenth position with 4 million names, kicking out French ccTLD .fr, which has 3.9 million.

Verisign wipes free TLDs from the world stats

The number of domain names registered globally dropped by over 25 million in the first quarter, but only because Verisign has stopped tracking .tk and its free sister ccTLDs in its quarterly estimates.

The latest Domain Name Industry Brief says that 2021 ended with 341.7 million registrations across all TLDs, substantially fewer that the 367.3 million it reported at the end of the third quarter.

But this is only because Verisign has decided to no longer count the six Pacific and African ccTLDs managed by Freenom, notably .tk, which had contributed 24.7 million names to the Q3 tally.

The report says: “the .tk, .cf, .ga, .gq and .ml ccTLDs have been excluded from all applicable calculations, due to an unexplained change in estimates for the .tk zone size and lack of verification from the registry operator for these TLDs.”

It sounds rather like there’s been another weird fluctuation in .tk’s numbers that threw off the overall trend picture again, and Verisign’s basically said “to hell with it” and decided to exclude Freenom from its reports from now on.

This means the normalized numbers for Q4 2021 — ignoring Freenom in all applicable quarters — are 341.7 million, up 3.3 million or 1.0% sequentially and up 1.6 million or 0.5% year over year, the DNIB states.

The Freenom business model is to give domains away for free, mostly, in the first instance. It makes its money by retaining and monetizing domains that either expire or, frequently, which it suspends for abuse.

.tk domains never get deleted, in other words, so counting them alongside TLDs with the industry-standard business model could give a misleading impression of the global demand for domain names.

It’s not so much that counting spam domains is bad — every TLD has a spam problem to a greater or lesser extent — but the lack of deletions can create faulty assumptions.

It’s also never been clear how Verisign and its third-party researcher, ZookNic, acquires its data on Freenom TLDs. Its .tk figure would often remain static for quarters on end, suggesting the data was only sporadically available.

I also tracked .tk’s published numbers independently for many years, and the last figure I have, from March 2019, is 41.3 million. It’s never been clear to me why the Verisign/ZookNic number has always been so much lower.

Verisign has always flagged up any oddities caused by .tk in its DNIB, and every edition has contained a footnote describing Freenom’s unusual practices.

The latest DNIB (pdf) says that .com had 160 million names, up 1.2 million, and .net had 13.4 million, down about 100,000, compared to Q3.

ccTLDs overall had 127.4 million, up about 700,000, a 0.6% sequential increase.

The ccTLD number was down by 5.3 million, or 4.0%, compared to the end of 2020, but that was due to a 9.4 million-name deletion by China’s .cn, which I noted in the second quarter and which Verisign calls a “registry-implemented zone reduction”.

Ignoring China, ccTLD names were up 4.1 million or 3.8%, the DNIB says.

Verisign only breaks out the top 10 ccTLDs separately, so the removal of .tk means that Australia’s .au is now in the top 10 list in tenth place with 3.4 million at the end of Q4. It will likely move up the ranks in the first quarter due to the release of second-level names, which has sped up its growth rate.

France’s .fr, with 3.9 million names, has now entered the overall top 10 TLDs due to .tk’s removal.

New gTLDs grew by 1.2 million names or 5.1% sequentially, but were down by pretty much the same amount annually, ending 2021 with 24.7 million names.

Domain industry SHRINKS again… except of course it doesn’t

Verisign has published its latest Domain Name Industry Brief, once again showing growth numbers thrown off wildly by a single factor.

The second quarter closed with 367.3 million registrations across all TLDs, down by 2.8 million over the same point last year, the DNIB states.

But the entirety of that decline can be attributed to a single TLD. It’s Tokelau again!

.tk was down by 2.8 million domains compared to the year-ago quarter also. This decline was first recorded by Verisign in the fourth quarter last year, where it had a similarly depressing effect on the overall picture.

The ccTLD is operated by Dutch company Freenom, which gives away most of its domains for free, often on a monthly basis, and monetizes residual traffic whenever a name expires or is suspended for abuse.

It’s quite possible that most of its names are registry-owned, so it’s in Freenom’s discretion to keep hold of its entire inventory or periodically purge its database, which may be what happened in Q4.

It’s debatable, in other words, whether .tk’s numbers is really any reflection or guide on the rest of the domain name industry. To it’s credit, Verisign breaks out the non-.tk numbers separately.

The DNIB reports a rosier quarterly growth comparison — total internet-wide regs were up by 3.8 million names, or 1.0%.

The company’s own .com did well, growing by 2.4 million names to end June at 157 million. Even .net did better than usual, adding a net of a couple hundred thousand names, to 13.6 million.

All the top 10 ccTLDs were flat sequentially after rounding, with the exception of Brazil’s .br, which was up by 200,000 names.

Total ccTLD regs were 157.7 million, up 1.2 million sequentially but down 2.4 million year-over year. Factoring out .tk, the increases were 1.2 million and 400,000 respectively.

The second quarter of last year was a bit of a boom time for many registries due largely to the lockdown bump, which saw businesses in many countries rush to get online to survive pandemic restrictions.

Tokelau can not be blamed for the whopping 8.8 million decline in new gTLD registrations between the Junes, of course.

About six million of the plummet can be blamed on heavily discounted .icu, which saw its first junk drop begin about a year ago, and another two million seem to be attributable to .top.

Quarterly, the picture was a little brighter — Verisign says new gTLDs were up by under 100,000 compared to Q1 at 22.9 million.

Domain regs dip for second quarter in a row and it’s all China’s fault

There were 363.5 million domain name registrations across all top-level domains at the end of March, down by 2.8 million names compared to the end of 2020, Verisign’s latest Domain Name Industry Brief shows.

But the losses can be attributed mostly to China, which saw plummeting .cn regs in the ccTLD world and big declines across gTLDs popular with Chinese speculators.

In .cn, regs were down a whopping four million at 20.7 million in the quarter. China has historically been subject to steep fluctuations due to local government regulations.

Overall, ccTLD registrations were down 2.4 million at 156.5 million, but that seems to be all down to China.

All the other ccTLDs in the DNIB top 10 were either flat or up slightly on Q4. The frequent wild-card .tk did not have an impact on this quarter’s numbers, staying flat.

Verisign does not break down new gTLD registrations, but zone file and transaction report data shows that the likes of .icu and .wang, which typically sell first-year regs very cheaply, were hit by material junk drops in Q1.

ShortDot’s .icu zone file shrank by 2.5 million names between January 1 and March 30. It’s still in decline in Q2, but the trajectory isn’t nearly as steep. It had 814,000 zone file names at the end of Q1.

Zodiac’s .wang was at 525,000 at the end of 2020 but had dropped to 86,000 by March 30.

.top also lost around half a million names in the first quarter.

The vast majority of regs in .icu, .top and .wang come through Chinese registrars, which often sell for under a dollar for the first year.

The DNIB reports that .com performed well as usual, up from 151.8 million reported in the Q4 report to 154.6 million, but Verisign bedfellow .net was once again flat at 13.4 million.