Q2 2020: Many new domain registrations in .ie, .fr, .es and .ro

The CENTRstats Global TLD Report Q2/2020 has been published. The report covers the status and trends in all top-level domains with a focus on European ccTLDs (country code top-level domains).

Highlights from the report

European market

• Over Q2, particularly high rates of new domain sales were recorded in .ie, .fr, .es and .ro;
• ccTLDs make up an estimated 61% of the market across Europe;
• There was an 8.7% increase of Facebook users from the previous quarter.

Global outlook

• At the end of Q1 2020, the global market was estimated at 375 million domains under management with a split of 66% to gTLDs and 34% to ccTLDs;
• Median domain growth for Q1 2020 was recorded at 0.7% ;
• The top 10 gTLDs represent 92% of all gTLDs.

EUROPEAN MARKET
The COVID-19 pandemic has left an impression on many European ccTLDs particularly in relation to new domain sales. Due to lockdowns across Europe, many businesses retreated from physical shopfronts to the online world while entrepreneurs in precarious employment tried supplementing their income with online ventures. These were all likely reasons to the surges observed in new domain sales over Q1 and into Q2 with a peak in May 2020. The surges have since begun to plateau but left a noticeable mark to growth rates across European ccTLDs with the median rate over Q2 recorded at 1.3%, up from just 0.5% recorded a year earlier.

Over Q2, particularly high rates (relative to overall domains under management) of new domain sales were recorded in .ie (Ireland), .fr (France), .es (Spain) and .ro (Romania) potentially giving an insight to the entrepreneurial spirit (or severity of lockdown) in these countries.

GLOBAL MARKET
At the end of Q1 2020, the global market was estimated at 375 million domains under management with a split of 66% to gTLDs and 34% to ccTLDs. This split has been relatively stable despite the introduction of new gTLDs, many of which first arrived on the market in 2015.

For the Global100 (top 100 largest TLDs globally), median domain growth for Q1 2020 was recorded at 0.7% – up slightly from the previous quarter as well as being the highest quarterly rate since at least 2017. The upward momentum was observed in both TLD categories with median rates for the ccTLD50 and gTLD300, both up from the previous quarter to 0.7% and 1.0% respectively. It is highly likely that the increased rates of domain growth are linked to the global COVID-19 pandemic appearing in the quarter which produced higher rates of new domain creations across many TLDs.

Over Q1 2020, the median growth rate of the top 300 gTLDs was 1.0%, up from 0.3% in the previous quarter. The largest gains were recorded in .com, .wang, .top, .org and .xyz, most of which saw a net growth of over 100K domains over Q1.

gTLDs are heavily concentrated to several large ones with the top 10 gTLDs representing 92% of all gTLDs. This has barely changed over the course of the past few years since the introduction of hundreds of new gTLDs.

Growth among geographic gTLDs improved in Q1 2020 with a median rate of 0.53% (top 25) for the quarter. Those that stood out over the quarter with relatively high growth rates whilst maintaining healthy renewals were; .eus, .nrw, and .brussels.

The pdf version of the full report can be found here.