
The total number of domain names registered around the world increased incrementally in the first quarter of 2023, growing 1.0% or 3.5 million, which coincidentally was the same 1.0% and 3.5 million increase for the 12 months to the end of March, according to Verisign’s latest Domain Name Industry Brief.
For Verisign’s .com and .net, the story was much the same. For .com there was an increase to 161.6 million registrations, up from 160.5 million at the end of the fourth quarter to 2022, and 161.3 million 12 months ago. For .net, the total remained the same from the end of the fourth quarter of 2022 to the and the end of the first in 2023 at 13.2 million, but there was a decline from 13.4 million 12 months ago. New .com and .net domain name registrations totalled 10.3 million at the end of the first quarter of 2023, compared to 10.2 million domain name registrations at the end of the first quarter of 2022.

Total country code top-level domain (ccTLD) registrations were 135.7 million at the end of the first quarter of 2023, an increase of 2.6 million registrations from 133.1 million, or 2.0%, compared to the fourth quarter of 2022. ccTLDs increased by 2.3 million registrations, or 1.7%, year over year. This compares to 133.1 million at the end of the first quarter of 2022.

The top 10 ccTLDs as of 31 March were .cn, .de, .uk, .nl, .ru, .br, .au, .fr, .eu, and .it. A big mover in the top ccTLDs has been Australia’s .au, moving from equal ninth and 3.5 million registrations at the end of the first quarter 2022 to seventh largest ccTLD and 4.2 million registrations 12 months later, due almost solely to the more than 740,000 second level .au registrations, 660,000 of these in the 12 months to the end of March, according to auDA statistics [pdf].

As of 31 March, there were 308 global ccTLD extensions delegated in the root zone, including internationalised domain names, with the top 10 ccTLDs comprising 59.7% of all ccTLD domain name registrations.
For new generic top-level domains (new gTLDs), the top 10 represented 51.4% of all new gTLD registrations. The following chart shows new gTLD domain name registrations as a percentage of overall TLD domain name registrations, of which they represent 7.7%. In addition, the chart on the right highlights the top 10 new gTLDs as a percentage of all new gTLD domain name registrations for the first quarter of 2023.

According to the DNIB, there were 51 geographic new gTLDs, the largest of which were .africa with 18.4% of all geographic new gTLD registrations followed by .tokyo (14.3%) and .nyc (7.5%).

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