Global domain market: registration median growth hits new low

The CENTRstats Global TLD Report Q2/2019 has been published. The report covers the global status and registration trends in all top-level domains (legacy gTLDs, new gTLDs and ccTLDs), with additional focus on the European ccTLD market.

Highlights from the report

• Median growth in global domain name registrations has hit a new recorded low;
• There has been a recovery in growth rates for ccTLDs in Europe. High performing ccTLDs* over the past 12 months were .pt (Portugal), .ie (Ireland), .ee (Estonia) and .fr (France);
• Combined ccTLDs make up roughly 41% of all domain registrations while .com, the single largest TLD, has a stable market share of 42%;
• New gTLDs have just under 10% of the market, and .blog and .shop stand out in terms of key performance ratios.

For the second quarter in a row, median growth in the global domain name registrations has hit a new recorded low. The median growth of the top 300 largest TLDs at July 2019 was recorded at 3.1% year on year, down from 5.6% a year earlier. Of the current top 300, roughly 1 third have contracted in total domains over the past 12 months.

Across regions and TLD types, growth rates range from 2.0% median among European ccTLDs to 8.5% among the relatively small number of African ccTLD domains. Since the beginning of the year, there has also been a noticeable drop in growth of gTLDs with the rate slipping from 5.0% to 2.4% YOY (based on the top 300).

New gTLDs (those launched from 2012 onward) which total well over 1000 different extensions, have just under 10% of the market with a median growth rate of 2.8% YOY. Combined ccTLDs make up roughly 41% of all domain registrations while .com, the single largest TLD, has a stable market share of 42%.

Recently, Cisco umbrella ranking data has been introduced to the report. The rank shows TLD ranks based on passive DNS usage across the Cisco global network of more than 100 billion requests per day with 65 million unique active users, in more than 165 countries. It provides an impression on usage and popularity of a TLD and may give additional insight when viewed in conjunction with registration metrics such as domain count.

There are roughly 72 million domains across all recorded ccTLDs in Europe (57). After a particularly sharp slide in growth rates, the past few months have seen a recovery pushing up from a low of 1.5% in April to 1.9% (year on year) in July 2019.

Median domain growth among gTLDs has continued to fall closing July at 2.4% year on year. The rate has been driven by a closing gap between creates, which are reducing and deletes, which are increasing. Despite the slowdown, .com has continued to achieve an above-average growth of 5.0%, a renewal rate of 71% which has helped to increase its overall gTLD market share to 73%.

On analysis of key performance ratios, a couple of new gTLDs stand out. .blog has been growing steadily since late 2016 with domains currently over 200K, a relatively strong renewal rate of close to 60% and parked domains ratio (24%) well below the average. The long-term delete ratio however has been slowly rising.

Another new gTLD worth noting is .shop. It has close to 700K domains and growth of 24% YOY. While the renewal rate is not high it is still very much in a growth phase with high relative create ratio of 65% – is well above the average.

Other strong performers in the mid-size category have been .cloud, .life, .rocks, .tokyo and .world. Each of these gTLDs have strong growth, relatively good renewal rates and low to medium rates of parking.

(CENTRstats Global TLD Report is CENTR’s quarterly publication covering status and trends in top-level domains with a focus on European ccTLDs (country code top-level domains). CENTR is the association of European country code top-level domain (ccTLD) registries, such as .de for Germany or .si for Slovenia. CENTR currently counts 54 full and 9 associate members – together, they are responsible for over 80% of all registered country code domain names worldwide. The objectives of CENTR are to promote and participate in the development of high standards and best practices among ccTLD registries.)