The international popularity of Germany’s ccTLD .de continues to grow. There were 17,160,504 .de domains at the end of 2021 with 1,695,256 (9.88%) of these domains registered abroad, according to a DENIC report. Within one year, the number of international registrations has increased by 244,000, almost twice as much as in the previous year (2020: 128,000).
In relation to the total number of .de domains, the share of international registrations is now 9.88%, up from 8.7% 12 months ago, the report notes, available in German only. The worldwide popularity of the .de domain has been growing steadily for years and the registrants are spread all over the globe.
The largest share of international registrants is the United States with 21% of the international registrations, accounting for 360,000 .de domains. Almost twice as many registrants (656,000) come from the six European countries – Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Portugal and France, making up 38.7% of the foreign .de stock. Within one year, this share has increased by 3.6 percent, while the percentage of non-European countries represented in the top ten has remained almost unchanged at a combined 16%. The share of the remaining foreign registrations in the .de domain portfolio has decreased by 2.6% in 2021, by 21,000 to 401,000.
Despite the significant increase in internationally registered .de domains, more than 90 percent of registrations continue to take place in Germany. With almost 15.5 million domains from registrants who are resident in Germany, the market share of .de is around 60 per cent and thus continues to be the clear market leader in the national domain market.
After excluding Tokelau’s .tk, with a freemium model and lack of verifiable data, Verisign’s Domain Name Industry Brief now ranks .de as the second largest top-level domain in the world behind .com with 160.0 million domain names and the largest of the country code top-level domains.
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