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Store around the clock: the shopping domain .store has moved up to third place in the nTLD world rankings. In contrast, .com remains the industry's problem child, as a report by the .fr administrator AFNIC does not bode well for the future either.

In June 2024, the .fr registry AFNIC, which is following in the footsteps of VeriSign and CENTR with the publication of its "The global domain name market" report for the year 2023, will be the big exclamation mark. According to AFNIC, around 368 million domains were registered worldwide across all top-level domains at the end of 2023, an increase of 2.2% compared to the previous year. For .com, AFNIC reports a historic low with a decline of 0.7% compared to 2022. Although .com is still the leader with a market share of 44%, it is struggling with various problems. For example, .com is largely dependent on the North American market, where it has a very dense distribution network; ccTLDs dominate in all other major regions of the world (Latin America, Africa, Asia-Pacific, Europe). Furthermore, .com has become more vulnerable due to several waves of fee increases; the effects are felt particularly strongly in the regions where ccTLDs are the preferred choice. Finally, geopolitical factors (in Russia, China, etc.) are contributing to the declining appeal of .com outside the US. And the current trend confirms AFNIC; in June 2024 alone, .com lost over half a million domains in registrations.

There is a change in the nTLDs. As predicted here several times, .store has moved up to third place, pushing .top out of the top 3. Admittedly, the difference is rather small at around 23,000 domains; nevertheless, .top has been stagnating for several weeks, while .store has been steadily gaining registrations. And each increase has an effect that can also be observed on stock exchanges: a top level domain becomes more interesting for new customers, and not least the managers of domain portfolios have to consider a preventive defensive registration in order to prevent potential damage through cybersquatting. It is therefore quite possible that .store will advance even further and overtake the previously second-placed nTLD .online. However, .xyz remains the undisputed leader, not least thanks to a net increase of over 230,000 domains in June 2024 alone.

There continues to be lively interest in .ai domains, which were originally assigned to the British overseas territory of Anguilla but are now particularly popular in the artificial intelligence (AI) community. The Government of Anguilla, which is rather sparing with the publication of registration figures, has announced that exactly 478,696 .ai domains were registered as of June 1, 2024. On December 20, 2023, there were (only) 353,928 .ai domains, and on April 12, 2024, there were already 425,060. Despite comparatively high registration fees in the three-digit range, the demand for .ai is therefore unbroken. And finally, we don't want to leave .africa unmentioned. More than 50,000 domains will soon be registered there again. In 2023, .africa was already at just under 190,000 domains, but then lost considerable ground; now things are set to pick up again: "Our next milestone for .africa is to reach 100,000 registrations. Onwards and Upwards .africa!", says Lucky Masilela, CEO of Registry Africa.

The current domain figures:

.de 17,704,044 (compared to the previous month: + 1,231)
.at 1,479,705 (compared to the previous month: - 7,196)
.com 157,648,957 (compared to the previous month: - 543,809)
.net 12,983,130 (compared to the previous month: + 8,026)
.org 10,902,952 (compared to the previous month: + 3,710)
.info 3,555,793 (compared to the previous month: - 31,022)
.biz 1,227,743 (compared to the previous month: - 1,534)
.eu 3,624,184 (compared to the previous month: - 9,141)

.xyz 4,141,207 (compared to the previous month: + 232,719)
.online 3,576,882 (compared to the previous month: + 4,449)
.store 3,268,221 (compared to the previous month: + 65,173)

(as of July 01, 2024)

You can find AFNIC's "The global domain name market" report here:
https://www.afnic.fr/wp-media/uploads/2 ... n-2023.pdf

Things are going downhill: the US registry VeriSign expects registrations under the two most important generic endings worldwide, .com and .net, to fall by two to three per cent in 2024. Things are not expected to pick up again until the second half of 2025.

At the end of July 2025, VeriSign published the latest "Domain Name Industry Brief" for the second quarter of 2024. According to this, 362.4 million domains were registered worldwide as at 30 June 2024, of which 157.6 million domains were under .com and 13.0 million domains under .net. Although the total number of registered domains increased by 5.8 million compared to the previous year, .com and .net lost around 1.8 million registrations in the first quarter of 2024 alone. VeriSign CEO Jim Bidzos therefore lowered the forecast for 2024 as a whole to a decline of between two and three per cent; in February 2024, the range was still between a plus of one per cent and a minus of one per cent; in other words, positive growth is no longer to be expected this year. Bidzos went on to say that he does not expect a return to positive growth until the second half of 2025. The "combined renewal percentage" for .com and .net was 72.6 per cent in Q2 2024; by comparison, VeriSign calculated a value of 38.0 per cent for the nTLDs.

And while we're on the subject: Despite a slight loss of around 7,000 domains in July 2024, .xyz can maintain its top position among the nTLDs. However, .shop continues to make strong progress; it has gained almost 130,000 domains in the last four weeks and is thus moving ever closer to .online. .gay, on the other hand, has disappointed. Although June is considered "pride month", when LGBTQIA+ communities around the world come together to celebrate their freedom and diversity, this has not had an impact on the registration figures for .gay. The extension lost over 600 domains in June 2024 and the downward trend continued in July with a three-digit drop; .gay currently stands at 23,075 registered domains. Overall, however, July was a good month for the nTLDs; their total number rose from 39,130,442 to 39,431,936, an increase of around 300,000 domains across all endings.

Ukraine, badly shaken by the Russian war of aggression, can look back on a difficult first quarter for its .ua country code extension. According to the registry Hostmaster Ltd., a total of 471,716 .ua domains were registered as at 31 March 2024, meaning that the total number of domain names fell by eight percent. The main reason for this was that numerous domains that were previously automatically renewed in February 2022 at the start of the war were deleted by January 2024. Over the course of three months (from November 2023 to February 2024), a total of more than 123,000 of these domain names were deleted. Despite this decline, 255 new .ua domains were registered every day in the first quarter of 2024, which is 30 per cent more than in the previous year. The number of registrars has also continued to rise, laying the foundation for a positive development.

The current domain figures:

.de 17,677,602 (compared to the previous month: - 26,442)
.at 1,479,375 (compared to the previous month: - 330)
.com 157,278,510 (compared to the previous month: - 370,447)
.net 12,929,165 (compared to the previous month: - 53,965)
.org 10,917,343 (compared to the previous month: + 14,391)
.info 3,537,383 (compared to the previous month: - 18,410)
.biz 1,225,331 (compared to the previous month: - 2,412)
.eu 3,627,202 (compared to the previous month: + 3,018)

.xyz 4,134,168 (compared to the previous month: - 7,039)
.online 3,607,965 (compared to the previous month: + 31,083)
.shop 3,397,395 (compared to the previous month: + 129,174)

(as of 01 August 2024)

You can find the current "Domain Name Industry Brief" at:
https://dnib.com/articles/latest-report

The domain market has often seen stormy times, but in August 2024 it is unusually calm with no major outliers. Instead, Turkey is reporting rapid growth for the country extension .tr.

Optimists would speak of stability, pessimists of stagnation and realists of deadlock - in August 2024, the registry market was conspicuously inconspicuous. With .at, .info, .biz and .eu, the changes in four important top-level domains were in the homeopathic range. Scoffers would say that .com is also developing steadily, albeit steadily downwards; after all, the world's most important top level domain has once again lost registrations in recent weeks. However, the net loss of just under 220,000 domain names is bearable. The next four weeks will be particularly exciting: as planned, the purchase prices for .com have risen from US$ 9.59 to US$ 10.26 as of 1 September 2024. As registration contracts usually run for one year, some domain investors may have stocked up on .com again and thus contributed to the tolerable result in August. However, the crash in September could be all the steeper.

No major moods can be observed on the nTLD market. Their total number has increased from 39,431,936 to 39,765,987, with .shop once again standing out. After an increase of 129,174 domains in July, August saw an increase of 99,189 domains, meaning that the gap to .online, the second most successful new domain extension to date, is melting like chocolate ice cream at the height of summer. In the lower positions, it is noticeable that interest in .cfd has fallen sharply. While there were still over 1.1 million registered domains on 1 June 2024, there are currently just around 800,000 .cfd addresses. The .cfd extension is marketed as a domain for ‘ClothingFashionDesign’ in the fashion world; the crisis in the fashion trade therefore also seems to be affecting the top-level domain.

The Middle Kingdom is not reporting good figures either. According to the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), registry of the Chinese country code extension .cn, exactly 19,562,007 .cn domains were registered as at 30 June 2024. In the past six months, .cn has thus lost 563,757 domains. As .com has also been losing ground in China for several months, there does not appear to be an overflow from one top-level domain to another, but rather a general decline in demand. This is currently not the case in Turkey. Thanks to liberalisation, around 1.2 million .tr domains are currently registered, with the number recently increasing by almost six figures in one day. The almost explosive growth is mainly due to the fact that numerous domain holders who are represented under one of the official subdomains such as .com.tr, .org.tr or .info.tr have made use of the privilege to register the shorter second-level counterpart. Since 4 September 2024, all interested parties can also register their domain directly under .tr, meaning that further growth can be expected.

The current domain numbers:

.de 17,650,370 (compared to the previous month: - 27,232)
.at 1,479,514 (compared to the previous month: + 139)
.com 157,060,810 (compared to the previous month: - 217,700)
.net 12,883,545 (compared to the previous month: - 45,620)
.org 10,948,581 (compared to the previous month: + 31,238)
.info 3,537,411 (compared to the previous month: + 28)
.biz 1,222,829 (compared to the previous month: - 2,502)
.eu 3,627,914 (compared to the previous month: + 712)

.xyz 4,194,734 (compared to the previous month: + 60,566)
.online 3,636,793 (compared to the previous month: + 28,828)
.shop 3,496,584 (compared to the previous month: + 99,189)

(as of 01 September 2024)

The top level domain .ai remains the domain extension of the moment: within a year, the country code of Anguilla has increased by around 225,000 domains. In the past, .com achieved similar figures in half a month, but the end of the growth seems to have been reached.

We would have loved to report that .com has turned the corner and returned to its decades-long growth trajectory, but to no avail. The commercial extension also lost ground in September 2024, with the bottom line being a loss of around 360,000 domains. The .com registry VeriSign also suffered losses with .net, while the rest remained comparatively stable, as in August 2024. .de stands out here; the German country code has increased by over 30,000 domains in the past four weeks. In the camp of nTLDs, .shop continues to catch up with .online. With currently around 3.62 million registered domains, only around 60,000 addresses are missing to take second place in the world ranking of newly launched top-level domains; if the current trend continues, it should be achieved by November 2024 at the latest. .xyz is still in first place, but with an increase of around 17,000 domains in September 2024, it is comparatively stagnant. Overall, the nTLDs are listed at 40,124,127 registered domains, thus jumping above the 40 million internet address mark again after a long time.

.ai, the official country code extension of the Caribbean island of Anguilla, is still on the upswing. Although the Government of Anguilla, the registry responsible for the top-level domain, which is marketed as an abbreviation for ‘artificial intelligence’, does not publish daily updated figures, it does provide a regular insight into current developments. And this is positive; as of 1 October 2024, 533,068 .ai domains were registered. By comparison, the last publicly available figure was from 1 July 2024, when there were 478,696 .ai domains. Within three months, .ai has therefore increased by 54,372 domains; compared to the previous year, there are even around 225,000 .ai domains. If .ai were a newly introduced top-level domain, it would currently be among the top 15 in terms of registration figures. Brand owners should therefore urgently consider being represented at least defensively under .ai, not to mention the possibilities of artificial intelligence.

In Poland, the .pl registry NASK has presented its report for the second quarter of 2024. According to the report, exactly 2,576,972 .pl domains were registered as at 30 June 2024; this represents an increase of 12,384 domains compared to the previous quarter. The renewal rate was 72.19 per cent and was therefore slightly lower than in Q1 2024, when it was 72.24 per cent. Interesting fact in passing: 15.31 per cent of the currently active 2,576,972 .pl domains were registered between 1994 and 2010, making them comparatively old. In contrast, the highest number of active .pl domains was registered in 2023, accounting for 17.99 per cent. Also worth a mention is .ua, the country extension of Ukraine. Despite the Russian war of aggression, .ua had a total of 466,327 registered domains at the end of Q2 2024, a slight loss of 1.14 per cent compared to the previous quarter. On average, 202 new .ua domains were registered every day - a clear sign of life!

The latest domain figures:

.de 17,680,768 (compared to the previous month: + 30,398)
.at 1,480,506 (compared to the previous month: + 992)
.com 156,700,192 (compared to the previous month: - 360,618)
.net 12,850,758 (compared to the previous month: - 32,787)
.org 10,968,024 (compared to the previous month: + 19,443)
.info 3,535,889 (compared to the previous month: - 1,522)
.biz 1,222,484 (compared to the previous month: - 345)
.eu 3,636,483 (compared to the previous month: + 8,569)

.xyz 4,212,369 (compared to the previous month: + 17,635)
.online 3,680,021 (compared to the previous month: + 43,228)
.shop 3,619,352 (compared to the previous month: + 122,768)

(as of 01 October 2024)