Verisign has published the latest edition of its traditional Domain Name Industry Brief Quarterly Report (DNIB). It sums up the results of the Q1 of this year and states that as of March 31, the number of domain names registered in the world reached 362.4 million. This is 2.5 million (or 0.7%) more than at the beginning of 2024. Compared to the same period in 2023, the increase was 7.5 million names, corresponding to 2.1%.
It is noteworthy that this growth was achieved despite negative trends in .COM and .NET domain zones managed by Verisign. The number of .NET registrations showed little change during the quarter, remaining at approximately 13.1 million. But the flagship of the domain industry .COM once again showed a decline, losing approximately 0.3 million registrations during the first quarter. As of March 31, 159.4 million names were registered in the domain zone. Compared to the first quarter of last year, the two Verisign-managed domains lost 2.3 million names.
In this situation, the growth in the total number of registrations was ensured by country codes and new gTLDs. National domains grew by 1.2 million names (0.9%) compared to the beginning of the year and reached a level of 139.5 million registrations. Compared to the Q1 of last year, the increase was 3.7 million names. It is also important to note that the Russian national domains .RU and .РФ have collectively surpassed the Dutch domain .NL in terms of the number of registrations. The report noted that Russian zones (.RU and .РФ) took 4th place among national zones.
As for new domains, they ended Q1 with 33.3 million registered names, adding 1.5 million registrations in 3 months, representing an increase of 4.7%. Compared to the same period last year, new generic top-level domains increased by 6 million names (22.1%).
