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I've
just returned from a very pleasant
family vacation on the opposite side of the
country from our home base in Florida,
spending it in the beautiful Pacific Northwest
near Seattle. Of course, the domain
industry never rests so there has been a lot to
catch up on since getting back. While I was away Verisign
released their quarterly Domain
Name Industry Brief (.pdf file)
that always includes a treasure trove of
information. The latest edition, covering the closing
quarter of 2021, reveals that the year ended
with 341.7 million domain names registered
across all extensions worldwide. |
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Given
the boom in the domain aftermarket, that
represents a smaller year over year increase in
registrations than most might expect. Only 1.6
million domains were added, pushing the total
up just 0.5% but, in a moment I'll show you
why growth was better than those numbers indicate.
While the overall
growth rate was modest, it was a different story
for Verisign's flagship .com TLD. 2021
ended with 160 million .coms registered, a
jump of 8.3 million from the previous year,
representing a healthy 5.47% increase for
.com. Verisign also administers .net and,
as has been the case for years, that TLD continues
to tread water, ending 2021 with 13.4
million registrations - the same number the
.nets had a year earlier.
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The
ccTLDs finished 2021 with 127.4
million domains registered. That is down
5.3 million, a 4% drop, year
over year. Now, that would be very
disappointing if we couldn't track it to a
single cause - but we can. China's .cn
underwent a zone reduction in 2021 that
lopped a whopping 9.4 million
domains from the TLD, accounting for all
of the general ccTLD drop and then
some. When you take .cn out of the
equation, the ccTLDs actually gained
4.1 million domains and enjoyed a 3.8%
increase. |
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With
the .cn situation, you can also see why
the total number for all TLDs appeared to
be so lackluster year over year. |
Shifting to the
new gTLDs, while they have been producing
impressive aftermarket sales in some select TLDs,
their total number of registrations slid in 2021,
finishing the year down 5.2% to 24.7
million after coming in 1.3 million
below the previous year's number. In this group,
with hundreds of competing TLDs, the
results vary wildly with some clear winners at the
top while most others are still working on
building recognition and a loyal user base. |
