ccTLDs Growth Outstrips Legacy gTLDs: CENTR Report

CENTR small logoThe growth rate for the 248 ccTLDs around the world has been higher than that for the 21 legacy gTLDs in the three months to the end of August according to the latest CENTR DomainWire report

CENTR logo

CENTR small logoThe growth rate for the 248 ccTLDs around the world has been higher than that for the 21 legacy gTLDs in the three months to the end of August according to the latest CENTR DomainWire report.

The number of domains registered across all ccTLDs was 129,388,192, an increase of 1.7 percent over the three months, not including internationalised domain ccTLDs, which themselves grew by the even higher rate of 2.9 percent to 1,244,863.

Meanwhile the 21 legacy gTLDs saw growth of 0.3 percent to 148,807,739. Meanwhile, as would be expected, registrations across all the new gTLDs grew significantly across the three months – growing a total of 139.8 percent to 2,070,244.

In total, according to the ZookNIC statistics used by CENTR, there was a total of 282,526,140 domains registered across all TLDs, an increase of 1.3 percent in three months.

Among the ccTLDs, growth was highest with the largest, .tk (Tokelau) which saw registrations of its free domains grow 8.6 percent to 26.0 million. No other ccTLD saw growth of over two percent, but five saw registrations of 1.0 percent or more. They were .cn (China) with growth of 1.8 percent to 10.8 million registrations, followed by .eu (European Union – 1.5% – 3.8m), .ch (Switzerland – 1.2% – 1.9m), .br (Brazil – 1.2% – 3.5m) and .au (Australia – 1.0% – 2.9m).

The 20 largest ccTLDs accounted for around 82 percent of all ccTLD domains registered globally and 38 percent of all domains.

Within Europe there were almost 66.5 million ccTLD domains registered at the end of August, a growth rate of 0.3 percent for the quarter and 2.8 percent for the year.

The report also notes the countries with the highest domain name penetration. Liechtenstein tops this list with 176 ccTLD domains registered per 100 people, followed by Montenegro with 117, boosted by their .me ccTLD being promoted as a gTLD. The Netherlands and Switzerland followed with 33 and 24 respectively, then Denmark (23), Germany (19) and the United Kingdom (17).

The report also looked at registrar security and authentication. CENTR asked over 100 registrars, web hosting companies, ISPs and other IT related organisations for their thoughts on some specific areas of security management. The aim of the survey was to gather views on how to increase the security level access to their web portals as well as to evaluate the need for a greater emphasis on two-factor authentication and other security features.

The survey found that 90 percent of respondents are not aware of any situation where leaked credentials have led to an attacker modifying DNS or related data. This left 10% who have experienced this type of incident. Almost 70 percent of all respondents stated an attack of this kind would be a major impact on either the entire or part of the organisation.

To download the CENTR report in full, go to:
https://centr.org/news/09-25-2014/domainwire-sep14-global-tld-report