June 3, 2019
Australia's .au has often featured in the top ten list of country code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs) for active registrations. But not in the first quarter of this year according to Verisign.
Late last week, Verisign released its latest Domain Name Industry Brief, covering Q1 2019. The largest ccTLDs by number of reported domain names (source: Zooknic) were:
.. .au is nowhere to be seen - it also wasn't in the top 10 in Verisign's Q4 2018 report. In Q3 and Q1 2018 the .au ccTLD sat in the number 10 slot.
So how far behind France's .fr ccTLD is .au? According to statistics available on auDA's web site relating to the end of March, there were 3,123,166 active .au names, with 2,831,796 of those .com.au registrations. The total number of .au names under management at the end of March represented 1.8% year-on-year growth and total domains created in March were up 4.7% year over year.
Verisign's report states registrations across all ccTLDs reached 156.8 million at the end of the first quarter, an increase of 10.5 million domain name registrations, or 7.2 percent, year over year.
In other news from Verisign's latest brief, the company states first quarter of this year finished up with 351.8 million domain name registrations across all top-level domains (TLDs). This represented an increase of 18.0 million registrations, or 5.4 percent, year over year.
You can view Verisign's Domain Name Industry Brief for Q1 2019 here.
*The .tk situation is an interesting one given the country has a population of just 1,500. While it's technically a ccTLD, it can be registered by anyone, anywhere and its numbers built up to such a high level due to free registrations. Excluding .tk, ccTLD domain name registrations at the end of Q1 had increased by 7.8 million registrations, or 6.2 percent, year over year reports Verisign.
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