Association of European country code top-level domain registries CENTR has published DomainWire Stat Report for the first quarter of the year. The document indicates that the largest net growth came from ccTLDs during this period – about 2.6%. For comparison: the total net growth in “old” gTLDs was 1.8%. There were 323.1 million domain names registered by the end of March of this year. There are 161.6 million “old” domains, 143.7 million ccTLDs, another 15.9 million domain names are registered in new gTLDs and 1.8 million in IDNs.
The leader by growth is the ccTLD of China .CN. It is also number one in the list of the biggest ccTLDs having 18.5 million names registered. Russian ccTLD .RU is number 5 in this list. Talking about European ccTLDs, the highest net growth were demonstrated by domains of Estonia - .EE, Montenegro - .ME, Armenia - .AM, Portugal - .PT and Cyprus - .CY.
The situation is controversial in IDNs. Their aggregate growth was quite significant – 8.7% higher than indicators of the previous quarter. However, it was achieved mainly because of the rapid growth of two zones – Chinese .中国 and Belarusian .БЕЛ. The average growth for IDNs was actually negative (- 0,6%).
Talking about new domains, report authors state the downward trend in their growth rate and stabilization of the situation. They explain that about 400 new domains have overcome the barrier of 1 year and the period of the first enthusiasm is over. This is why current situation, probably, reflects the real level of interest towards new domains.
