Domain name market developments in Q2 2020
Rapid growth for .nl
Quarter 2 of 2020 was a period we won't easily forget. The number of registered domain names passed six million, and .nl ended the quarter with 6,000,085 domain names. That represents a net growth of 86,126 domain names. The sharp upturn was remarkable, given that the first quarter of 2020 saw the .nl domain grow by just 8,020 names. So let's look back at an extraordinary three months for the domain name industry.
Large increase in the number of new registrations
Growth was driven mainly by a surge of new registrations, accompanied by a marked decline in cancellations. That's an unusual pattern: as you can see in figure 1, registrations and cancellations normally rise or fall together. The recent dynamism of .nl is undoubtedly linked to the measures taken in response to the coronavirus pandemic, such as the temporary closure of physical shops. Loss of traditional income flows will have prompted many businesspeople to shift their focus to the internet. Over the quarter, more than 267,000 new domain names were registered, while 185,000 were cancelled. A further 4,000 or so quarantined domain names were also reactivated.
Figure 1: New registrations and deletions of .nl domain names (source: DRS, SIDN).
Neighbouring countries
Looking at ccTLD’s growth in France, Belgium and Germany, it's apparent that .nl had a strong quarter in comparative terms as well. Our cumulative growth was just under 1.5 per cent last quarter. In France's .fr domain, cumulative growth was well above that, at 2.1 per cent. However, .fr is something of an anomaly, because it has only 3.5 million domain names. That's about the same number as in Belgium's .be domain, although Belgium has a population of just 11.5 million, compared with 67 million in France.
Figure 2: Cumulative growth in ccTLDs, Q2 2020 (source: CENTR).
Global picture
.com, the world's biggest TLD by far, grew by 0.9 per cent last quarter. However, the pattern of growth was by no means universal: .uk actually contracted by nearly 6 per cent, while .info registered a decline of 2.6 per cent. Turning to new TLDs (those started since ICANN's most recent delegation round), we see a very mixed picture. For example, .online expanded by nearly 10 per cent, but domains such as .top, .site and .shop all lost ground (-11.3 per cent, -6.7 per cent and -2.5 per cent, respectively). No growth data is yet available for China's .cn, the second biggest TLD in the world, with 22 million domain names.
Figure 3: Growth of the world's top ten TLDs, relative to size, Q2 2020 (source: Domain Name Stats).
TLD | Total | Q% |
|---|---|---|
.com | 146,786,521 | 0.90 |
.de | 16,491,810 | 0.53 |
.net | 13,181,438 | 0.00 |
.uk | 10,271,499 | -5.93 |
.org | 10,123,880 | 0.79 |
.nl | 6,000,085 | 1.42 |
.icu | 5,837,862 | -7.81 |
.ru | 4,949,451 | -0.32 |
.info | 4,220,864 | -2.62 |
.br | 4,179,735 | 0.48 |
.fr | 3,550,248 | 2.04 |
.it | 3,322,030 | 1.43 |
.au | 3,185,541 | 0.54 |
.top | 3,162,212 | -11.28 |
.ca | 2,913,889 | 1.43 |
.xyz | 2,782,128 | 2.10 |
.pl | 2,456,161 | 0.42 |
.ch | 2,313,465 | 1.13 |
.es | 1,953,118 | 1.81 |
.site | 1,734,799 | -6.71 |
.be | 1,665,228 | 1.31 |
.us | 1,652,905 | 1.45 |
.tw | 1,587,859 | -47.77 |
.online | 1,495,372 | 9.45 |
.se | 1,467,631 | 0.74 |
Figure 3: Last quarter growth in global top 25 TLDs (source: Domain Name Stats).
