The CIDN registry, which manages the Dutch national domain .NL, has published some unexpected statistics. Since the start of the restrictive measures taken to counteract the spread of COVID-19, the number of new registrations in .NL has exceeded 85,000. That is almost 10,000 more than in the same period of 2019, when no quarantine measures were in place. Since the beginning of April, over 17,000 domain names have been registered in .NL, while the total number of registrations reached 5,930,715 by April 20. Of course, we can’t be sure the growth is related to the pandemic, but it seems highly likely the coronavirus played a role. The SIDN registry carried out a survey of registrants and found that absolutely all of them are going to use domains only for online activities as opposed to promoting a bricks-and-mortar business.
In any case, it is still not a reason to claim that the domain business will benefit from the pandemic. The results of .NL could be an exception rather than the rule. Thus, Domain Incite, when reporting this news, points out that between the end of March and April 20, the .COM domain grew by approximately 383,000 new domain names. In the same period last year, the increase was 434,000.
