Globally ccTLDs make up 44% of all domain names under management, a figure that has changed little in recent years, but within Europe the figure is 59% according to the CENTRstats Global TLD Report Q1/2018 published Friday. The difference would largely be explained by .com’s dominance in the United States.
Globally, registrations grew by 1.4% in the year to the end of March bringing the total registrations to 333 million. In Europe, CENTR estimates around 30% (around 100 million) of the world’s domain names are registered. Among the country code top level domains (ccTLDs) registered in Europe, growth was 3.6% in the 12 months “and continue a period of stable growth, in part due to a decline in average deletion rates along with flat rates of new domains.” In Europe, 2.5 million ccTLD domain names were added in the 12-month period with some ccTLDs reversing the slowing growth seen in previous years. The stabilisation in growth is in part due to a decline in average deletion rates along with flat rates of new domains and renews.
Among the gTLDs, they grew by a combined 0.2% over the past year, while within Europe there was a 1% increase despite declines in .top, .org, .net. .biz. The largest gTLD, .com, grew at just over 4% globally and maintains 46% of the global TLD market.
At country level, the national ccTLD is most commonly the TLD of choice and is generally followed by .com while .eu is often within the top 5. Over the past year .eu has grown by the highest percentage in Austria, Portugal and Croatia.
ccTLDs in Europe, Asia and the Americas are all averaging similar annual percentage growth of 2 to 4%. However the African region has shown signs of increasing growth over the past 2 years. High growth ccTLDs in the African region were .zw (Zimbabwe), .tn (Tunisia) and .cm (Cameroon).
CENTR has also added the median retail price for new registrations of European ccTLDs to their research. They found the median price was €10 (excluding tax) with a range of €1 to €60. At registry level, the median wholesale price is €6 excluding tax. The report notes that research has shown that there is a reasonably strong positive correlation between wholesale and retail prices, suggesting registrars adjust their prices to support the underlying wholesale price.
Among generic top level domains (gTLDs), growth totalled 0.1% for the 12 months to the end of March. Among the legacy gTLDs, .com and .info were the ones to have maintained consistent positive growth. Of the gTLDs, .com accounted for around 71% of the global market, with the rest attributed to other legacy gTLDs (18%) and new gTLDs (11%). The CENTR report also found that median growth among geographic gTLDs was 1.9% year-on-year. This group has some of the lowest rates of domain parking among all new gTLDs
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