DENIC released their annual update on the distribution of .de domain names both within Germany and throughout the world this week for 2022. Overall there was little change from 2021. Domain registrations in the former West Germany remained above that of the former East, with the divide increasing slightly, Berlin remained the city with the most domain names, Osnabruck the city, the state of Hamburg, and several districts in Bavaria remained those with the most domain names per capita.
At the end of 2022, the number of .de domains registered worldwide had grown to 17,420,367, an increase of 260,000 in the 12 months to the end of 2022 compared 460,000 in the 12 months to the end of 2021. 15.6 million of these were registered in the 400 cities and districts of Germany, an increase of 1.5% in 2021/2022 compared to 2.8% in 2020/2021. It also meant there was one domain name registered within Germany for every five people. The remaining 1.8 million domains were registered abroad.
City Domain Registrations
Unexpectedly the top places for domain registrations were large cities again. Berlin stayed clearly in the lead with 999,426 domain name registrations, followed by Hamburg (613,232) and Munich (550,097), who swapped positions. When it comes to per capita registrations, Osnabruck remained number one with 1,669 .de domains per 1,000 inhabitants, far ahead of Bonn (373) and Munich (370). In regard to districts, the frontrunners were located in the south of Germany again, namely Bavaria, with Miesbach (632 domains) first, followed by Starnberg (508) and Freising (416).
The national average was 186 .de domains per 1,000 inhabitants (higher individual statistical values reflect local domain investors with larger-scale domain portfolios). Going by absolute numbers, domain growth was considerably more pronounced in the 294 districts than in the 106 cities.
State Domain Registrations
At the state level, the state of Hamburg – comprising the city of Hamburg and its wider outskirts – with 331 domains per 1,000 inhabitants was well clear of Berlin (273) and Bavaria (208). Even though they also recorded an increase in domain numbers, the states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (110), Thuringia (108) and Saxony-Anhalt (86) once again brought up the rear. All German states saw an increase in registrations in 2022 except for Berlin (-0.6%) and Bavaria (-0.4%) while Brandenburg (0.2%), Thuringia (0.3%), Hesse (0.6 %), Saxony-Anhalt (0.7%) and Schleswig-Holstein (0.7%) saw increases below the federal average.
North Rhine-Westphalia with 3,402,791 registrations remained the state with the highest number of domains registered while also experiencing the highest absolute annual growth (+46,612). The so-called Free State of Saxony with 546,762 registered .de domains achieved the highest density and the largest annual growth (1.2%) among the federal states in the east and maintained its tenth place. The smallest number of .de domains – even though it scored the highest percentage growth on an annual basis – continued to be reported for the city state of Bremen (133,938).
Registrations Abroad
Of the 1.8 million (1.7m at end 2021) domain names registered abroad, there was an increase of 8.9% (2021: 16.8%) in registrations accounting for 10.6% of all .de domains at the end of 2022 (2021: 9.9%). Most of those .de domain names registered abroad were registrants in the United States (31% of all registrations abroad) and the Netherlands (13%). Then followed Austria (9%), Portugal (7%), Switzerland (5%) and Great Britain and the United Arab Emirates, which accounted for 4% each.
DENIC provides more detailed information in the statistics section of their website here: denic.de/en/know-how/statistics