The Council of European National TLD Registries (CENTR) presented its report for the past year. According to its data, as of December 31, 2023, the number of domain names registered in countries belonging to the European Union is estimated at no less than 82 million. The increase compared to last year was 0.4%. The highest growth rates were demonstrated throughout the year by national domains in Poland (.PL), France (.FR) and Italy (.IT). In addition, generic top-level domains .BOND, .STORE, .ONLINE and .INFO have also achieved good growth rates in European countries. At the same time, the generic top-level domain .COM is experiencing a period of stagnation in the European market.
The median market share of country code domains of European countries is about 54% in the European market. The median cost of registering a domain name in the national domain of a European country has decreased throughout 2023 and amounted to 9.4 euros (including taxes). The cost of registering a name in the .COM domain zone with the same registrar companies was 12.5 euros. At the same time, the median price for renewal of registration in national domains of European countries continued to grow and reached approximately 15.7 euros in 2023.
The region's 30 largest country codes showed a median growth of 1.4% in 2023. At the same time, the volume of deletion of previously registered domains increased slightly, the level of renewal remained consistently high, and the volume of new registrations decreased slightly. Based on this, CENTR experts believe that growth rates will remain at the same level this year. Speaking about the use of domain names in national domains of European countries, it can be noted that approximately 43% of domains have active sites, 27% of domains are parked and another approximately 30% do not have any content and do not respond to requests.
