Belgiumâs ccTLD saw domain name registrations climb marginally by around 1% to 1,603,508 at the end of 2018 to a new record high, but for new registrations these were at their lowest since 2008, a sign of a maturing market where new growth is becoming difficult to find. Itâs a situation thatâs mirrored in many ccTLDs in Europe and other developed countries.
Within Europe, growth among its 57 ccTLDs was only 1.9% in the year to the end of April 2019, while globally the figure was 3.4%, a new record low according to the latest CENTRstats Global TLD Report published in May.
According to DNS Belgiumâs annual report for 2018 there were 226,727 new registrations in 2018 and a healthy renewal rate of 86.55% which is on the rise. But one of the other 2 top-level domains managed by DNS Belgium had an even higher renewal rate with .brussels at 87.01% while for .vlaanderen the figure was 86.47%. However total registrations for both of these are much lower with 7,670 for .brussels and 6,607 for .vlaanderen making up 0.32% and 0.28% of all domain names in the country.
Within Belgium, 54.42% of all domain names are .be domains, 15.09% .com and .eu at 6.95%. Rounding out the top 10 were .loan with 5.51% of all registrations, .net (5.50%), Netherlandsâ .nl (2.76%), Franceâs .fr (1.63%), .org (1.55%), .info (0.65%), and Germanyâs .de (0.54%).
When it comes to how .be domain names are used, 81.83% of them have a website, 75.27% for email, 69.81% for both, 12.72% of .be domain names only have a website and 5.46% only have email while 12.02% have neither. For the types of website content, 58.65% of all websites have what is described as âlow contentâ (websites with minimal content: pay per click, error messages, holding pages), 2.41% for personal content (for example, blogs) and 38.95% for industry or business.
When it comes to where .be registrants come from, naturally most are from Belgium with 68.92%. Next is the Netherlands with 17.68% of registrants, France (4.79%), Germany (1.85%) and the US (1.47%) being the only countries above 1.0%.
Almost three-quarters (74.84%) of .be registrants have only one domain name and 12.64% have 2 domain names. The distribution of .be domain names to companies and individuals sees 72.36% going to companies and 27.64% to individuals.
There are 408 registrars for .be domain names with the top 3 accounting for 26.89% of all registrations, the top 10 for 54.21% and the top 100 for 90.50%.