One In 5 .NZ Domains Now Registered At The Second Level

Down in the Antipodes, InternetNZ has begun to release a quarterly report of life in .nz in a new easy-to-read format, and the first of these reports for the period April to June 2019 shows that almost one in 5 .nz domain names are now registered at the second level.

At the end of the quarter there were a total of 710,892 .nz
domain names, 507,890 .co.nz domains and another 62,963 registered across all
their other 2LDs. Under .nz, second level registrations were introduced in September
2014 and have been gradually growing ever since.

For these 710,892 domains under management there are 312,715
unique registrants – 122,303 individuals and 190,412 organisations. Under .nz,
individual registrants have the option to have their personal details kept private
and 30,296 unique registrants making up 44.47% (54,389) of all individual
domain registrations have chosen to have the privacy option enabled.

The report notes that during the quarter there was some
minor shrinkage in .nz domains under management due to a small drop in
registrations and some registrars auditing accounts under their management
against the registry and removing inactive accounts.

The registrar market is also going through some significant
consolidation with global acquisitions affecting the ownership of several .nz
registrars. Additionally, the Domain Name Commission has worked with the
InternetNZ Technical Research team to identify how .nz domain names may be used
for “fake” webshops. These domain names are being added to the data validation
process that the Domain Name Commission operates.

For new domain names, there 27,928 creates as well as 29,218 cancellations and 262,558 renewals for the quarter. Under “compliance”, the report notes there were 32 domain names cancelled, 9 disputes started and 4 disputes closed.

There were 87 authorised registrars selling .nz domain names with the top 4 accounting for 43.39%, the next 4 20.11% meaning the remaining 79 account for 36.5%.

On the infrastructure side of things there 34.4 billion DNS
queries for the quarter with a DNS service level and SRS service level both of
100%.

The .nz quarterly report for April to June 2019 can be downloaded here [pdf].