After total domain name registrations decreased by 2.7 million, or 0.7%, to 364.6 million in the third quarter of 2021, they were back on the up in the fourth quarter. The fourth quarter of 2021 closed with 341.7 million domains across all TLDs, an increase of 3.3 million domain name registrations, or 1.0%, compared to the third quarter of 2021 according to Verisign’s latest Domain Name Industry Brief. Domain name registrations have increased by 1.6 million, or 0.5%, year over year.
The second quarter of 2020 saw global domain name registrations continue to rise, with an increase of 3.3 million, or 0.9%. This took total registrations around the world to 370.1 million as the global COVID-19 pandemic continued to wreak havoc.
Brazilâs ccTLD manager, NIC.br, announced [Portuguese only] Monday theyâve reached the 4 million registrations mark after âmore than 25 years of flawless operationâ.
There are over 120 second level domains under which .br domain names can be registered from blog.br and wiki.br for individuals to eng.br and adv.br for liberal professionals, tv.br and tur.br for legal persons, rio.br, sampa.br and curitiba.br for cities those reserved for specific purposes such as gov.br, jus.br, b.br and org.br among others. Some of these have as few as 10 registrations, while the largest, com.br has 3,645,125 accounting for 91.2% of all registrations.
According to the latest Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief, .br is the seventh largest country code top level domain (ccTLD). Verisign already had .br at 4 million domain name registrations at the end of 30 June, probably through rounding, up in this case, to the nearest hundred thousand. Chinaâs ccTLD was the largest with 22.7 million followed by Tokelauâs free .tk (21.5m), Germanyâs .de (16.3m), the United Kingdomâs .uk (12.0m), Russiaâs .ru (5.9m), the Netherlandsâ .nl (5.8m). Following .br is the European Unionâs .eu (3.8m), Franceâs .fr (3.2m) and rounding out the top 10 is Italyâs .it (3.1m).
Revenues from .br registrations allow NIC.br to, in addition to providing and maintaining the infrastructure behind .br, invest in a series of actions and projects that generate benefits and improvements to the internet infrastructure in Brazil. These include the operation of internet traffic exchange points, which promote the interconnection of networks that form the Internet in Brazil, reducing distances and costs; the handling security incidents and tracking internet statistics.
Nic.br notes that other advantages of registering .br domain names include additional security features, such as token and encryption, that strengthen both the accounts of Registro.br users, and their respective domains. There is another recent feature: a redirection feature that lets you point a .br domain to any URL, whether it’s on a website or the preferred channel on social networks, keeping identities and active tags on the Internet permanently. Servers distributed by Brazil and other regions of the world guarantee speed and reliability in the resolution of .br and a team exclusively dedicated to meet and assist users in their doubts complete the description.
The growth in domain names was once upon a time not so many years ago on a sharp upward trajectory. But over the last couple of years that growth has slowed dramatically, with registrations growing 1.0% in the year to the end of the first quarter in 2018, or 3.2 million, to approximately 333.8 million domain name registrations across all top level domains, according to the latest Domain Name Industry Brief from Verisign for the first quarter of 2018. For the quarter, registrations grew approximately 1.4 million, or 0.4%, compared to the fourth quarter of 2017.
This growth compares to the year to the end of the first quarter of 2010 when domain name registrations grew by 11 million, or 6%, or the year to the end of the first quarter of 2017 when registrations grew 11.8 million, or 3.7%.
Total country-code top level domain (ccTLD) registrations were approximately 146.3 million at the end of the first quarter of 2018, with an increase of approximately 0.2 million domain name registrations, or 0.1%, compared to the fourth quarter of 2017. ccTLDs increased by approximately 3.2 million domain name registrations, or 2.2%, year over year. This is a noticeable improvement on 12 months ago when the growth was 1.7% year over year. In the year to the end of the first quarter 2010 growth was 3.2%.
The .com and .net TLDs had a combined total of approximately 148.3 million domain name registrations in the domain name base at the end of the first quarter of 2018, with an increase of approximately 1.9 million domain name registrations, or 1.3%, compared to the fourth quarter of 2017.
The .com and .net TLDs had a combined increase of approximately 4.6 million domain name registrations, or 3.2%, year over year. As of 31 March, the .com domain name base totalled approximately 133.9 million domain name registrations, up from 128.4 million 12 months ago, while the .net domain name base totalled approximately 14.4 , down from 15.2 million 12 months ago.
New .com and .net domain name registrations totalled approximately 9.6 million at the end of the first quarter of 2018, compared to 9.5 million domain name registrations for the first quarter of 2017.
Total new generic top level domain (new gTLD) domain name registrations were approximately 20.2 million at the end of the first quarter of 2018, with a decrease of 0.4 million domain name registrations, or 2.0%, compared to the fourth quarter of 2017. New gTLDs decreased by approximately 5.3 million domain name registrations, or 20.7%, year over year.
Among the top 10 TLDs, the first 7 are the same as one year ago – .com is the largest followed by .cn (China – 21.4 million), .tk (Tokelau – 19.9m), .de (Germany – 16.3m), .net (14.4m), .uk (United Kingdom – 12.0m) and .org (10.3m). In eighth place was .info (6.2m) followed by .ru (Russian Federation – 6.1m) and .nl (Netherlands – 5.8m). In 2017 places 8 to 10 consisted of .ru, .nl and .xyz.
In their report Verisign note that their figures include domain names in the .tk ccTLD. .tk is a free ccTLD that provides free domain names to individuals and businesses. Revenue is generated by monetising expired domain names. Domain names no longer in use by the registrant or expired are taken back by the registry and the residual traffic is sold to advertising networks. As such, there are no deleted .tk domain names.
This article can be read with images at:
http://www.domainpulse.com/2018/06/15/new-gtlds-plummet-net-slides-while-com-and-cctlds-continue-to-grow-verisign-dnib/
Three in 5 .men domain names are classified as “bad” according to the latest Spamhaus analysis of the world’s most abused TLDs, but only slightly worse than .loan, who have a “Badness Index” of 6.43 and 6.35 respectively.
The Spamhaus analysis found that 43,758 of the 72,370, or 60.2%, .men domain names analysed were classified as “bad” and with a “Badness Index” of 6.43, slightly worse than the 39,642 out of 65,782 (60.0%) .loan domain names and a Badness Index of 6.35. Following was .gq (Equatorial Guinea) with 55.3% of analysed domains classified as bad and a Badness Index of 6.32, then .cf (Central African Republic) with 54.6% and a Badness Index of 6.24, .ga (Gabon) with 53.0% bad and a Badness Index of 6.06, .ml (Mali) with 51.5% bad and a Badness Index of 5.89, .top (46.4% bad and a Badness Index of 5.58), .work (53.4% bad and a Badness Index of 5.58), .click (64.9% bad and a Badness Index of 5.49) and the world’s third largest top level domain and second largest country code top level domain .tk rounding out the top 10 with 42.1% bad and a Badness Index of 4.83.
Registries that allow registrars to sell high volumes of domains to professional spammers and malware operators in essence aid and abet the plague of abuse on the Internet, say Spamhaus. Some registrars and resellers knowingly sell high volumes of domains to these actors for profit, and many registries do not do enough to stop or limit this endless supply of domains.
So what is a bad TLD? Spamhaus explains that a TLD may be “bad” in two ways. On one side, the ratio of bad to good domains may be higher than average, indicating that the registry could do a better job of enforcing policies and shunning abusers. However, some TLDs with a high fraction of bad domains may be quite small, and their total number of bad domains could be relatively limited with respect to other, bigger TLDs. Their total “badness” to the Internet is limited by their small total size.
The other side is that some large TLDs may have a large number of bad domains as a result of the sheer size of their domain corpus. Even if their corrective measures are effective, they still constitute a problem on the global scale, and they could assign further resources to improve their anti-abuse processes and bring down the overall number of bad domains.
In defining a “badness” index, Spamhaus decided to weight in both these factors. With a certain amount of arbitrariness—and at the same time a desire to avoid excessive complications—so they defined badness as:
where
Spamhaus says one can think of this number as the bad domains fraction weighted with the TLD's size, or as the order of magnitude of the problem weighted with the effectiveness of anti-abuse policies. Presented this way, this data more closely matches the perceptions Spamhaus staff has in dealing with this issue in a daily production basis. We hope that this definition helps to spotlight registries that in one way or another can be considered problematic, in a fair way.
These data represent domains seen by Spamhaus systems, and not a TLD's total domain corpus. Domains in this data are in active use, showing up in mail feeds and related DNS traffic. Other domains may be parked or used for traffic outside of our systems' focus, and those domains are not included in this summary.
The registries listed provide spammers and other miscreants with a service they need in order to survive. Many, even most, TLDs succeed, by and large, in keeping abusers off their systems and work to maintain a positive reputation. That success shows that these ten worst could, if they tried, “keep clean” by turning spammers and other abusers away.
Global domain name registrations continue to rise, with approximately 332.4 million registrations at the end of 2017 across all top level domains, according to the latest Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief out today. The increase for the fourth quarter was approximately 1.7 million domain names, or 0.5%, from the third quarter and 3.1 million, or 0.9%, year over year.
Within this slight increase there are notable declines â that of .net which declined to 14.5 million at the end of December from 15.0 million at the end of the third quarter and 15.3 million at the end of 2016. Five years ago at the end of 2012 there were 14.9 million .net registrations.
There was also a decline in the total number of new generic top level domains (new gTLDs) registrations. Among the new gTLDs there were approximately 20.6 million registrations, or 6.2% of total registrations across all TLDs. This was a decrease of approximately 0.5 million registrations, or 2.4% for the quarter, and approximately 5.0 million registrations (19.5%) year over year. The top 10 ngTLDs represented 48.9% of all new gTLD registrations.
But of course there were increases. The big behemoth, .com, saw registrations rise to 131.9 million at the end of 2017 compared to 130.8 million 3 months earlier, 126.9 million 12 months ago and 106.2 million at the end of 2012.
Total country code top level domain (ccTLD) registrations were approximately 146.1 million, a 1.0% increase over the third quarter of 2017, and a 2.4% increase year over year. Registrations at the end of the third quarter of 2017 were 144.7 million, 142.7 million 12 months ago and 110.2 million 5 years ago when the 12 month growth rate for ccTLDs was 21.6% in 12 months.
Without including .tk, ccTLD registrations increased approximately 0.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2017, a 0.5% increase compared to the third quarter of 2017 and ccTLDs increased by approximately 2.3 million registrations, or 1.8%, year over year.
The top 10 ccTLDs as of 31 December were .cn (China), .tk (Tokelau), .de (Germany), .uk (United Kingdom), .ru (Russian Federation), .nl (Netherlands), .br (Brazil), .eu (European Union), .fr (France) and .au (Australia). As of the end of 2017, there were 302 global ccTLD extensions delegated in the root, including Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs), with the top 10 ccTLDs composing 65.5 percent of all ccTLD domain name registrations.
New .com and .net domain name registrations totalled 9.0 million during the fourth quarter of 2017 compared to 8.8 million for the fourth quarter in 2016 and 8.0 million 5 years earlier in 2012.
It was only a few years ago that the growth in the number of domain names registered around the world was in the 5 to 10% range every year, sometimes even higher. Today however that growth has slowed to a crawl as many markets around the world reach maturity, even saturation.
In the 12 months to the end of June domain name registrations grew by 6.7 million, or 2.1%, year over year, to a total of 331.9 million domain names across all top level domains according to the latest Domain Name Industry Brief from Verisign. For the second quarter of 2017, registrations grew approximately 1.3 million equating to a growth rate of 0.4% over the first quarter.
The .com and .net top level domains had a combined total of approximately 144.3 million domain name registrations as of the end of June. This represents a 0.8% increase year-on-year. There were 129.2 million .com registrations and 15.1 million .net registrations.
New .com and .net domain name registrations totalled 9.2 million during the second quarter of 2017. In the second quarter of 2016, new .com and .net domain name registrations totalled 8.6 million.
Compared to previous years, the global year-on-year growth across all TLDs for the 12 months to 30 June in 2009 was 9%, to 30 June 2012 it was 11.9%, 5.9% to 30 June 2015 and 12.9% to 30 June 2016.
The top 10 TLDs as of the end of June for selected years with total registrations where published in Verisign’s DNIB were:
| June 2017 | June 2016 | June 2015 | June 2012 | June 2009 | |
| 1. | .com – 129.2million | .com – 127.5m | .com – 118.5m | .com – 103.7m | .com |
| 2. | .cn (China) – 21.4m | .tk | .tk | .de | .cn |
| 3. | .tk (Tokelau) – 19.1m | .cn | .de | .net – 14.8m | .de |
| 4. | .de (Germany) – 16.2m | .de | .net – 15m | .tk | .net |
| 5. | .net – 15.1m | .net – 15.8m | .cn | .uk | .org |
| 6. | .uk (United Kingdom) – 10.7m | .org | .uk | .org | .uk |
| 7. | .org – 10.4m | .uk | .org | .info | .info |
| 8. | .ru (Russian Federation) – 6.4m | .xyz | .ru | .nl | .nl |
| 9. | .info – 5.9m | .ru | .nl | .ru | .eu (European Union) |
| 10. | .nl (Netherlands) – 5.7m | .nl | .info | .cn | .biz |
Total ccTLD registrations were approximately 144.2 million in the second quarter of 2017, with an increase of 1.1 million, or a 0.8% increase compared to the first quarter of 2017. ccTLDs increased by approximately 3.7 million registrations, or 2.6%, year over year. Without including .tk who gives away its domain names for free, ccTLD domain name registrations increased approximately 603,000 in the second quarter of 2017, a 0.5% increase compared to the first quarter of 2017 and ccTLDs increased by approximately 3.8 million registrations, or 3.1%, year over year.
As of 30 June there were 302 global ccTLD extensions delegated in the root, including Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs), with the top 10 ccTLDs composing 64.8% of all ccTLD registrations.
Registrations among the new generic top level domains totalled 24.3 million, which represents 7.3% of total domain name registrations. The top 10 new gTLDs represented 61.5% of all new gTLD registrations.
To read this story with images, see:
http://www.domainpulse.com/2017/09/15/global-domain-name-growth-a-crawl-second-quarter/
Once upon a time not that many years ago, the growth in domain name registrations each year was like growth in the Chinese economy – well over 10%. These days the growth rate overall is nothing to be sneezed. In the year to the end of March, registrations around the world grew by 3.7% (11.8 million) to 330.6 million across all top level domains (TLDs) according to the latest Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief. It was only in the preceding year, to the end of March 2016, that registrations had grown 11%.
OK, Verisign add a proviso when looking back on registrations for registrations to the end of March 2016 for the .tk (Tokelau) country code top level domain (ccTLD) with a significant re-estimation downwards of its zone file size. As a result total global domain name registrations were changed from 326.4 million to 318.8 million. However these 10%+ annual registration increases were standard for several years.
The change in of annual registration increases of below 5% though are likely to be standard for some years to come as the significant growth is coming from ccTLDs in developing countries and within new gTLDs, although even here due to some new gTLDs such as .xyz having hugely discounted promotions, renewal rates are very low and even declining. However in total new gTLD registrations have stabilised around the 27 million mark for the last 6 weeks according to nTLDstats.com. As of 31 March new gTLD registrations were near their peak of 29.1 million. They peak at 29.4 million in mid-April.
For the quarter, registrations grew only 0.4% (1.3 million) to 31 March, which indicated an even greater slowdown in registration growth.
The .com and .net TLDs had a combined total of approximately 143.6 million domain name registrations in the domain name base in the first quarter of 2017 – 128.4 million for .com and 15.2 million for .net. This represents a 0.8% increase year over year, almost entirely due to increase in .com.
Among ccTLDs, .cn (China) has regained the crown of the largest and now has 21.4 million registrations to be the second largest of all TLDs while .tk has 18.6 million with .de (Germany) next with 16.2 million. Following in the top ten TLDs is .net then .uk (United Kingdom – 10.6m), .org (10.4m), .ru (Russian Federation – 6.4m), .nl (Netherlands – 5.7m) and then the largest of the new gTLDs, .xyz (5.6m).
Growth in ccTLDs was only 0.3% for the quarter, or 408,242 registrations, and 1.7% (2.4 million) for the year. Without including .tk, ccTLD domain name registrations increased approximately 568,242 in the first quarter of 2017, a 0.5 percent increase compared to the fourth quarter of 2016 and ccTLDs increased by approximately 4.6 million domain name registrations, or 3.9 percent, year over year.
At the end of the first quarter there were 294 global ccTLD extensions delegated in the root, including Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs), with the top 10 ccTLDs composing 64.7 percent of all ccTLD domain name registrations.
For the new gTLDs registrations totalled 25.4 million as of 31 March, 7.7% of total domain name registrations. The top 10 new gTLDs represented 64.1% of all new gTLD domain name registrations.
Volume 14, Issue 2, of the Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief is available for download from:
http://www.verisign.com/assets/domain-name-report-Q12017.pdf
An archive of recent reports is available from:
http://www.verisign.com/en_US/domain-names/dnib/domain-name-industry-brief-reports/index.xhtml
2016 closed with global domain name registrations reaching 329.3 million according to the latest Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief, growing by approximately 2.3 million registrations, or 0.7% over the third quarter of 2016. Registrations grew by 21.0 million, or 6.8%, year over year. The most notable changes over the last 12 months were China’s ccTLD adding over 4 million registrations to become the largest ccTLD again, while .tk and .net shed over 7 million and 500,000 registrations respectively.
Total country code top level domain (ccTLD) domain name registrations were approximately 142.7 million, a 1.8% increase over the third quarter of 2016, and a 3.1% (4.3 million) increase year over year.
Without including .tk which has dropped from 26 million to 18.7 million in the 12 months to the end of 2016, ccTLD domain name registrations increased approximately 2.1 million in the quarter, a 1.7% increase compared to the third quarter of 2016 and ccTLDs increased by approximately 8.0 million domain name registrations, or 6.9%, year over year.
It means China’s ccTLD has now overtaken the free registration model of .tk to become the largest ccTLD and second largest TLD overall, again, positions it last held back in 2009 when it had over 14 million registrations. In the last 12 months .cn has grown by 4.24 million registrations.
At the end of 2016, .com was the largest TLD with 126.9 million registrations, followed by .cn with 21.1 million, .tk (18.7 million), .de (16.1m) and .net (15.3m). The largest of the new gTLDs remains .xyz which had 6.0 million registrations.
The top 10 ccTLDs, as of 31 December were .cn (China), .tk (Tokelau), .de (Germany), .uk (United Kingdom), .ru (Russian Federation), .nl (Netherlands), .br (Brazil), .eu (European Union), .au (Australia) and .it (Italy).
There were 293 global ccTLD extensions delegated in the root, including Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs), with the top 10 ccTLDs composing 64.7 percent of all ccTLD domain name registrations.
For .com and .net, both operated by Verisign, .com grew from 124 million registrations at the end of 2015 and 115.6 at the end of 2014. However for .net it’s a different story and it has suffered since the introduction of new gTLDs. In 2016 .net bled half million registrations from the 15.8 million one year ago but is still above the 15 million at the end of 2014.
New .com and .net domain name registrations totalled 8.8 million during the fourth quarter of 2016. In the fourth quarter of 2015, new .com and .net domain name registrations totalled 12.2 million.
New generic Top Level Domains (new gTLDs) totalled 25.6 million domain name registrations, which represents 7.8% of total domain name registrations. The top 10 new gTLDs represented 63.% of all new gTLD registrations.
Verisign’s average daily Domain Name System (DNS) query load during the fourth quarter of 2016 was 143 billion across all TLDs operated by Verisign, with a peak of 398 billion. Quarter over quarter, the daily average increased 11.4 percent and the peak increased by 122.5 percent. Year over year, the daily average query load increased by 16.0 percent and the peak increased 105.1 percent.
A week or so after the Italian ccTLD .it reached three million registrations, the French ccTLD reached the same milestone.
It means the French country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD), today with 3,005,270 registrations, is probably the tenth largest ccTLD behind .it given the latest Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief for the end of June, discounting .tk (Tokelau) due to it giving away its domain names and the large amount of phishing spam and scams using the ccTLDâs domains.
The .fr grew by 2.1% in 2016 and the registry says simplicity, attractiveness and trust are the main reasons for its success.
“Registering a .fr domain name is one of the keys to a successful online presence for companies and individuals alike,â said Mathieu Weill, Afnic CEO. âTo support the development of their business on the Internet, Afnic has set up the Réussir-en.fr program (réussir-en.fr), and intends to continue its efforts to make France a European leader in online presence.”
.fr domain names are available for registration to any person or business with a mailing address in the European Union.
Afnic donates 90% of the profits generated by .fr to its Foundation for Digital Inclusion(fondation-afnic.fr) which funds field projects to make the Internet accessible to the greatest number of people and to reduce digital exclusion throughout France.