The 2016 domain ranking shows that last year, some 5,424,919 domain names were registered in the .RU national domain. This is the ninth highest result among the world’s TLDs -- national, international and new. In 2016, .RU got ahead of .INFO for number of users. For the first time, the top 10 largest TLDs now includes the new TLD .XYZ that came in seventh with 6,676,022 domain names.
.RU is the fifth among the country code TLDs following China (.CN), Germany (.DE), Great Britain (.UK) and the Netherlands (.NL).
The .RU domain also boasts the highest growth rate among the major European ccTLDs (over 1 million domain names). The domain grew by 384,641 domain names or around 7.6%. This is 2.1 times higher than the 2015 result. .RU also has the fifth fastest annual growth in the world, losing only to China (.CN), the United States (.US), India (.IN) and Columbia (.CO).
As of the end of 2016, .РФ had 897,324 domain names, which puts it in 18th place among European ccTLDs. In 2016, the domain grew by 32,984 domain names or by 3.8%. This is a similar outcome to 2015, when .РФ grew by 29,159 names (3.5%).
“2016 was a record-breaking year for many indicators. For example, last year the number of accredited registrars increased by 12 companies. Now Russia has 45 registrars for .RU and .РФ. The number of .RU domain names continues to grow. This spring we are expecting to hit 5.5 million,” Coordination Center Director Andrey Vorobyev said.
