CENTR, which includes European country code top-level domain registries, has published its Global TLD Market Report for the third quarter of 2020. In the European market, the rate of new domain creations continued to be high, along with a slight decrease in deletes. In particular, the document says that in the third quarter (with the exception of August where registration activity is typically much lower due to vacations), registration activity was high and median growth continued to increase by 0.9% over the quarter and 3.4% over the past 12 months. It seems that the pandemic and the related lockdown restrictions have become factors accelerating ccTLDs growth “after many years of stagnation,” the report says. At the height of the lockdowns, the number of new registrations in many European ccTLDs grew by 20% compared to the same period last year.
According to the key observations, in Q3 2020, the median create ratio (new domain registrations normalized to total domains) was 4.4%, and the median delete ratio was 3.3%. Median delete ratios have decreased since April 2020, suggesting domain holders are opting more often to renew their domains.
The global market share of domain name registrations is roughly 47% to .COM, 33% to recorded ccTLDs and 20% to all other gTLDs. Globally, approximately 47% of third-quarter registrations were in the largest top-level domain .COM. One third of registrations (33%) were made in ccTLDs and 20% in generic top-level domains.
