Internationalised Domain Names may have failed to attract significant numbers of registrations, but they’re now offered by 84% (144) of all ccTLDs, with a further one in preparation to launch, according to the latest IDN World Report. But growth has been limited and awareness is still low.
Internationalised domain names are domain names that contains characters from languages other than English letters and numbers as well as hyphens. This includes non-English characters from languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Thai, Japanese, German, French and many more.
To date there have been 2.9 million IDN registrations, out of 360 million domain names around the world, which means 0.81% of all domains are IDNs. It’s not unexpected that IDNs will make up a small percentage of domain names given many people outside the language of the IDN will not be able to easily type in the domain name. But they are an important part of making the internet accessible to all.
Growth though in registrations among country code Top Level Domains seems to have stalled, with an actual decline in registration numbers in 2022 of 0.1% (out of a sample of 40 ccTLDs) after an increase of 2.5% in 2021. Latin is the most common script offered by ccTLDs in the sample set.
Among a sample of 282 generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs), the report found an estimated 1.4 million IDN registrations under gTLDs, over the 12 months to January 2023, with a median growth of 1.91%.
There was a growth rate of 3.4% among the top 300 TLDs – ccTLDs and gTLDs – globally.
Among other findings of the report:
- 74 registries support IDN registration at the second level with a further 5 registries in preparation to support.
- 17 registries offer both IDN and xn-- form in Port 43 WHOIS, 14 registries offer both forms in RDAP and 29 registries offer both forms in web-based WHOIS.
- 65 registries do not support the Homoglyph building.
- ccTLD registries rate registrar support 4 out of 5. This is an increase from the previous year’s score of 3.1.
- Registries rate end-user awareness of IDNs at 2.5 out of 5. This is an increase from the previous year’s score of 2.2.
To download the report in full, go to: idnworldreport.eu/report