CENTR, an association that unites European ccTLD registries, has published its July report. It shows negative trends on the domain market. For the second month in a row, the report notes a new recorded low in domain space growth: 3.1 percent this July compared with last year. Last year’s growth compared with July 2017 was 5.6 percent.
Almost one-third of the 300 largest TLDs finished the month with fewer registrations than at the beginning, while African ccTLDs show good growth indicators: 8.5 percent on average. However, the total number of domain names registered there is too small to have a large influence on global trends. The average growth in Europe, where the number of registered names is really high, was just two percent. Most of this growth came from the British .UK domain, where after the end of the second-level domain claims period registrants can register any second-level domain names.
The situation with the “old” TLDs is hardly better. Their average growth was 2.4 percent compared with last July, while the market’s overall leader, .COM, grew five percent and new TLDs gained 2.8 percent on average.
