The total number of .eu registrations grew by 2.2 percent in Q1 2014 to 3.79 million, according to the latest progress report released last week by the .eu registry EURid.
âThis relatively high growth rate is thanks, in part, to our high renewal rate of above 80% and the higher than expected level of new registrations,â commented EURid General Manager Marc Van Wesemael.
âThe latter is especially comforting as it shows that the popularity of.eu is further growing in a crowded market place, even as the many new gTLDs jostle for position.â
The report also found .eu registrations increased in 27 of the 28 EU member states with Croatia and Portugal both seeing growth of more than 10 percent.
According to the report, the number of Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs) in the .eu portfolio at the end of Q1 2014 was 52 683, or 1.4 percent of all registrations. The number of IDNs as a percentage of new registrations is at the same level as that of other registries. As well, the number of DNSSEC-signed names was 261 304 or 6.9 percent of all registrations.
The .eu TLD is the seventh largest ccTLD and eleventh largest TLD overall according to the Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief for the last quarter of 2013. The largest TLD is .com with 113.7 million registrations, followed by .tk (Tokelau) with 24.5 million, then .de (Germany â 15.7m), .net (15.1m), .uk (United Kingdom â 10.5m), .org (10.4m), .cn (China â 10.6m), .info (5.7m), .nl (Netherlands â 5.4m), .ru (Russia â 4.9m) and then .eu.
In addition to the growth, EURid also announced during the second quarter, on 12 April to be precise, the European Commission officially re-confirmed EURid as the registry manager for the .eu top-level domain for the next five years.
The full report is available for download at link.eurid.eu/reports.