
Over half (53%) of all .de domain names were registered in three German states – North Rhine-Westphalia (22%), Bavaria (18%) and Baden-Württemberg (13%) – at the end of 2019, according to the latest statistical analysis of .de domain names by Germany’s ccTLD manager DENIC.
The state of Hamburg – comprising the city of Hamburg and its wider outskirts – again was the state with the highest number of registrations per capita, with 313 domains per 1,000 inhabitants, maintaining its uncontested leading position and remained far ahead of Berlin (275) and the state of Bavaria (206). The state of Saxony-Anhalt (82) once again brought up the rear behind the states of Thuringia (103) and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (107), which swapped places. Measured in absolute numbers, the number of domains increased in the regions while it remained unchanged in the cities.

There were nine states showing growth equal to or above the average, with Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (+1.1%) leading. Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, Hesse and Rhineland-Palatinate reported increases of 0.8 percent respectively. Domain growth in 2019 was located primarily in the south on Germany.

As in 2018, the largest number of domains were registered in North Rhine-Westphalia (3,255,550 – 22%), which was followed by Bavaria (2,675,029 – 18%). The Free State of Saxony with 528,241 registered .de domains achieved the highest density among the federal states in the east of the country and scored ten again in the overall German ranking. The smallest number of .de domains was for the city state of Bremen (111,596).

Domains under management for Germany’s ccTLD increased 0.7 percent in the 12 months with more than 16.325 million .de domains at the end of 2019. This included over 1.3 million domains for registrants residing outside of Germany. The share of these domains increased again and accounted for 8.1 percent of all .de domains at the end of the year. Statistically, every fifth inhabitant (180 .de domains per thousand inhabitants) of the Federal Republic of Germany had registered a .de domain name. Thus, Germany consistently ranks fourth in the world after the Netherlands, Switzerland and Denmark.
