Q4 2023 report: .com and .net lose 1.2 million domains

VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN) announced that, according to the latest Domain Name Industry Brief Quarterly Report from DNIB.com, the fourth quarter of 2023 closed with 359.8 million domain name registrations across all top-level domains (TLDs), an increase of 0.6 million domain name registrations, or 0.2%, compared to the third quarter of 2023. Domain name registrations also increased by 8.9 million, or 2.5%, year over year.

The .com and .net TLDs had a combined total of 172.7 million domain name registrations in the domain name base at the end of the fourth quarter of 2023, a decrease of 1.2 million domain name registrations, or 0.7%, compared to the third quarter of 2023. The .com and .net TLDs had a combined decrease of 1.0 million domain name registrations, or 0.6%, year over year. As of Dec. 31, 2023, the .com domain name base totaled 159.6 million domain name registrations and the .net domain name base totaled 13.1 million domain name registrations.

New .com and .net domain name registrations totaled 9.0 million at the end of the fourth quarter of 2023, compared to 9.7 million domain name registrations at the end of the fourth quarter of 2022.

Total country-code TLD (ccTLD) domain name registrations were 138.3 million at the end of the fourth quarter of 2023, an increase of 0.2 million domain name registrations, or 0.2%, compared to the third quarter of 2023. ccTLDs increased by 5.3 million domain name registrations, or 4.0%, year over year. The top 10 ccTLDs, as of Dec. 31, 2023 were .cn, .de, .uk, .nl, .ru, .br, .au, .fr, .eu and .it.

Total new generic TLD (ngTLD) domain name registrations were 31.8 million at the end of the fourth quarter of 2023, an increase of 1.6 million domain name registrations, or 5.3%, compared to the third quarter of 2023. ngTLDs increased by 4.4 million domain name registrations, or 15.9%, year over year.

As of Dec. 31, 2023, the 10 largest TLDs by number of reported domain names were .com, .cn, .de, .net, .org, .uk, .nl,.ru, .br and .au.

The top 10 ccTLDs, as of Dec. 31, 2023, were .cn, .de, .uk, .nl, .ru, .br, .au, .fr, .eu and .it. As of Dec. 31, 2023, there were 308 global ccTLD extensions delegated in the root zone, including internationalized domain names, with the top 10 ccTLDs comprising 59.3% of all ccTLD domain name registrations.

The top 10 ngTLDs represented 53.2% of all ngTLD domain name registrations. The following chart shows ngTLD domain name registrations as a percentage of overall TLD domain name registrations, of which they represent 8.8%. In addition, the chart highlights the top 10 ngTLDs as a percentage of all ngTLD domain name registrations for the fourth quarter of 2023.