On February 25, 2017 the .RU domain contained 5.5 million names, moving further beyond the previous threshold of 5 million names reached in November 2015 and 4 million in September 2012. Thus, the Russian domain ranks fifth in domain names among national domains and ninth among all top-level domains. About 95% of domain names have been delegated in the .RU domain, including 21% registered by corporate entities and 79% by individuals. About 43% of names are used for websites and another 6% are used for redirecting.
“In 2016, the .RU domain showed high growth, increasing by 384,641 domain names (+7.6%), which is more than twice as many as in 2015 when growth totaled 180,820 domain names (+3.7%). These numbers are one of the best results among top-level domains. Only China’s .CN domain prevailed over .RU growth last year among top-level domains, while many European domains showed a negative trend,” said Andrey Vorobyev, Director of the Coordination Center for TLD.RU/.РФ.
Currently, 45 accredited registrars are working in the .RU domain, including the largest, REG.ru (with a market share of 35% in the .RU domain), Ru-Center (23%), R01 (15%), RegTime (6%) and SaleNames (5.6%).
