June 4, 2013
The Council of European National Top Level Domain Registries (CENTR) recently released updated domain name statistics.
The CENTR DomainWire Edition 4 report states the total number of registrations across all Top Level Domains (TLDs) stood at 258 million as at April this year; representing a growth of approximately 15 million registrations over the previous three months.
The biggest growth occurred not in gTLD's (generic Top Level Domains) such as .com, .net and .org, but in country code TLD's (ccTLDs). In fact, ccTLD's increased their overall market share to 44%, growth of over 10%.
However, much of the growth can be attributed to the .TK extension; which has in the past suffered from somewhat of a reputation problem given the business model of the registry; something the registry operators have been seeking to address.
Australian (.au) domains feature in the top 20 of the world's ccTLD's; making up around 2.6% of the category. According to the auDA, 2,681,519 .au domains were registered as at June 4, 2013.
The .CN extension has seen massive growth in recent times - skyrocketing by nearly 83% in 6 months.
European ccTLDs ended April with a tally of just over 64 million domains under management. Overall net growth for the preceding year was 6.7% - an increase of around 4 million domains. While the ongoing financial crisis has dampened growth a little, renewal rates have remained consistent over the past 3 years at around 79% says CENTR.
Residents of Liechtenstein appear to currently have the highest corresponding ccTLD registration rates - 188 domains per 100 people.
CENTR's DomainWire Edition 4 report can be viewed in full here (PDF). DomainWire is a bi-annual publication.
CENTR's primary function is the exchange of information between members and discussion of policies affecting ccTLD registries. Australia became an Associate Member of CENTR last year.
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