Verisign has published the latest edition of its Domain Name Industry Brief (DNIB), one of the most authoritative sources of information on the state of affairs in the domain industry. It sums up the results of the Q1 of the current year. As of March 31, there were 354 million domain names registered worldwide, according to Verisign. This is 3.5 million or 1% more than in the Q4 of the previous year. It is curious that the growth compared to the Q1 of 2022 turned out to be exactly the same: 3.5 million names and 1%.
The .COM and .NET operated by Verisign registered a total of 174.8 million names by the end of Q1 this year. 161.6 million of them are in the .COM, and 13.2 million are in .NET. The cumulative increase compared to the Q4 of last year amounted to 1 million names, which corresponds to 0.6%. Growth compared to the Q1 of last year is estimated at 0.1 million names or 0.1%. The number of new registrations in two domain zones for the Q1 was 10.3 million against 10.2 million a year earlier.
National domains showed higher aggregate growth rates. They added 2.6 million registrations or 2% compared to December last year. Compared to the Q1 of 2022, the growth was 2.3 million or 1.7%. National domain zones finished the Q1 of this year with 135.7 million registered names.
The new gTLDs had 27.3 million registrations by the end of March. This is 200,000 names less than in the Q4 of the previous year, in percentage terms, the decrease is 0.6%. But if we talk about annual dynamics, then compared to the Q1 of last year, new domains grew by 0.9 million names, which is an increase of 3.6%.
