Verisign, which administers the .COM and .NET domains, has published its report on the current situation and trends in the global domain industry (Domain Name Industry Brief) for the third quarter of 2018. The report concludes that the domain space continues to grow, but the growth trajectories have slightly changed.
The number of domain names registered in the world by the end of the third quarter reached 342.4 million, and grew 0.8 percent, or 2.6 million, compared to the second quarter. The main growth took place in the .COM domain and new gTLDs.
During this quarter, the number of names in Verisign’s .COM and .NET domains increased by two million and accounted for 151.7 million domain names, which is 1.3 percent higher than in the second quarter of 2018. .NET has held steady at 14.1 million (although it managed to stop its downward trend of several quarters in a row)..COM showed the main growth and finished September with 137.6 domain names.
The new gTLDs are seeing stable growth. As of September 30, 2018, 23.4 million domain names were registered in new gTLDs, which is 1.6 million more than in the second quarter. New domains continue to grow for the second quarter in a row, although it is still a far cry from the 25.6 million domain names hit in the fourth quarter of 2016. In addition, analysts believe there will be another decrease in registrations in the months to come.
The situation with ccTLDs all over the world is not so good. According to Verisign, ccTLDs have seen a decrease for the first time in several years. As compared to the second quarter of 2018, the number of domain names fell by 500,000, or 0.3 percent, and accounted for 149.3 million. The British .UK and German .DE domains suffered the most losses: each lost 100,000 registrations during the third quarter. Now there are 16.2 million domain names in .DE and 11.9 million in .UK.
The Russian ccTLDs (Verisign publishes the total number for .RU and .РФ) held on to their positions, following only four other ccTLDs.
