In February 2013, AFNIC published a report following an extensive study in 2012 of the world’s top 50 domain name extensions. The industry report reveals information regarding the performance of the 50 TLDs, in relation to each other and historically; the average growth rate was 7%, a 2% drop compared to 2011.
AFNIC (Association Française pour le Nommage Internet en Coopération) is the non-profit organization managing the TLDs .FR (France), .RE (Réunion Island), .YT (Mayotte), .WF (Wallis and Futuna), .TF (French Southern Territories), and .PM (Saint-Pierre and Miquelon). AFNIC is also positioned as a provider of technical solutions and services for registries and registrars.
Please see below for highlights of the study; if you wish to read in full, please visit AFNIC.
Relaxation creates surge for .CN domain names
A remarkable annual growth of 113% means .CN (China) is displaying the greatest increase in the number of registrations in 2012. The performance of the .CN extension has fluctuated for several years due to Chinese authorities imposing tight restrictions on registrations; topping four million names at year-end 2009 this figure dropped dramatically to three million in less than two years. The restrictions were relaxed in 2012 and subsequently the number of registrations at the end of 2012 has increased to almost six and a half million.
.COM still reigns as king of the domains
No surprise that .COM leads the generic extensions in growth, 8% in 2012; but it also boasted the highest number of registered domain names, 106 million.
Accent on the French
Founded in 1998, in December 2012 AFNIC announced it had over two and a half million .FR domains registered; new registrations in 2012 amounted to 730,000, an increase of 14% compared to the previous year.
The .FR extension ranks fourteenth out of the 50 extensions covered by the AFNIC report (generic and country code) and tenth in country code TLDs. The registrations of the .FR extension increased by 15% in 2012; excluding .CN, this is double the average growth of the other extensions.
Local presence is no longer a requirement when registering a .FR domain name and this brought an influx of new registrations. When AFNIC introduced IDNs (Internationalized Domain Names) on all their ccTLDs, the numbers grew again as French speaking Internet users were able to portray their domain names correctly using 30 new characters.
With the new gTLDs scheduled to hit the Internet this year; one applicant is The City of Paris and it has engaged AFNIC as the registry administering the new extension, .PARIS.
The best of the rest
The second most popular extension is .NET with 15,500,000 million registered names, closely followed by .DE (Germany, 15.3m), .ORG (10.3m), .TK (Tokelua, 10.5m), and .UK (10.3m). A recent surge shows .CN with seven and a half million names registered.
It is worth noting that the hugely popular .TK extension is ranking highly due to its beneficial registration policy; domain names can usually be registered free of charge, regardless of the registrants nationality.
Whilst there are only 300,000 registered .IR (Iran) domain names, it grew an impressive 40% in 2012. Iranians wishing to register a .IR domain name are welcomed with open arms; as is the rest of the world, but due to a UN embargo on the country whilst it is still possible to register a domain name, payment of registration fees is impossible.
The Portugal extension, .PT, displayed an annual growth of 28%; this impressive growth was aided by registration restrictions being lifted on May 1, 2012, allowing anyone to register a domain name. With the liberalization of .PT new features were also introduced including domain names supporting accented characters.
In the middle of 2010 .COM had reason to be concerned when it faced competition with the introduction of .CO (Colombia); with liberalized registration requirements it was marketed as an ‘open ccTLD’ or ‘quasi gTLD’ and an alternative to .COM. Google also recognized it as .COM substitute and aligned its terms of SEO so the two extensions were appraised accordingly. By 2012 there were two and a half million registered domain names.
Montenegro’s .ME extension has always been popular and has been increasing year on year since 2008; its potential as a generic name was soon apparent and it was heavily promoted in the English speaking market as a means to personalize ones website. Officially .ME is a ccTLD but Google accepted it as an unofficial generic name and so, allows geo-targeting.
Unfortunately not all ccTLDs are equal and there are some in decline including .KR (Korea) dropping 9% and the Russian extension represented in Cyrillic characters, .рф, dropping by 17% despite it being hugely popular when it was launched in 2012.
Final word
According to Verisign (provider of Internet infrastructure services for the networked world), there were seven million domains added to the Internet in Q2 2012; meaning the total number of generic and ccTLD names registered worldwide is almost 250 million. Globally, registrations have grown by 11.9% since Q2 2011; we can only wait and see what will happen when the new gTLDs hit the Internet.
AFNIC (Association Française pour le Nommage Internet en Coopération) is the non-profit organization managing the TLDs .FR (France), .RE (Réunion Island), .YT (Mayotte), .WF (Wallis and Futuna), .TF (French Southern Territories), and .PM (Saint-Pierre and Miquelon). AFNIC is also positioned as a provider of technical solutions and services for registries and registrars.
Please see below for highlights of the study; if you wish to read in full, please visit AFNIC.
Relaxation creates surge for .CN domain names
A remarkable annual growth of 113% means .CN (China) is displaying the greatest increase in the number of registrations in 2012. The performance of the .CN extension has fluctuated for several years due to Chinese authorities imposing tight restrictions on registrations; topping four million names at year-end 2009 this figure dropped dramatically to three million in less than two years. The restrictions were relaxed in 2012 and subsequently the number of registrations at the end of 2012 has increased to almost six and a half million.
.COM still reigns as king of the domains
No surprise that .COM leads the generic extensions in growth, 8% in 2012; but it also boasted the highest number of registered domain names, 106 million.
Accent on the French
Founded in 1998, in December 2012 AFNIC announced it had over two and a half million .FR domains registered; new registrations in 2012 amounted to 730,000, an increase of 14% compared to the previous year.
The .FR extension ranks fourteenth out of the 50 extensions covered by the AFNIC report (generic and country code) and tenth in country code TLDs. The registrations of the .FR extension increased by 15% in 2012; excluding .CN, this is double the average growth of the other extensions.
Local presence is no longer a requirement when registering a .FR domain name and this brought an influx of new registrations. When AFNIC introduced IDNs (Internationalized Domain Names) on all their ccTLDs, the numbers grew again as French speaking Internet users were able to portray their domain names correctly using 30 new characters.
With the new gTLDs scheduled to hit the Internet this year; one applicant is The City of Paris and it has engaged AFNIC as the registry administering the new extension, .PARIS.
The best of the rest
The second most popular extension is .NET with 15,500,000 million registered names, closely followed by .DE (Germany, 15.3m), .ORG (10.3m), .TK (Tokelua, 10.5m), and .UK (10.3m). A recent surge shows .CN with seven and a half million names registered.
It is worth noting that the hugely popular .TK extension is ranking highly due to its beneficial registration policy; domain names can usually be registered free of charge, regardless of the registrants nationality.
Whilst there are only 300,000 registered .IR (Iran) domain names, it grew an impressive 40% in 2012. Iranians wishing to register a .IR domain name are welcomed with open arms; as is the rest of the world, but due to a UN embargo on the country whilst it is still possible to register a domain name, payment of registration fees is impossible.
The Portugal extension, .PT, displayed an annual growth of 28%; this impressive growth was aided by registration restrictions being lifted on May 1, 2012, allowing anyone to register a domain name. With the liberalization of .PT new features were also introduced including domain names supporting accented characters.
In the middle of 2010 .COM had reason to be concerned when it faced competition with the introduction of .CO (Colombia); with liberalized registration requirements it was marketed as an ‘open ccTLD’ or ‘quasi gTLD’ and an alternative to .COM. Google also recognized it as .COM substitute and aligned its terms of SEO so the two extensions were appraised accordingly. By 2012 there were two and a half million registered domain names.
Montenegro’s .ME extension has always been popular and has been increasing year on year since 2008; its potential as a generic name was soon apparent and it was heavily promoted in the English speaking market as a means to personalize ones website. Officially .ME is a ccTLD but Google accepted it as an unofficial generic name and so, allows geo-targeting.
Unfortunately not all ccTLDs are equal and there are some in decline including .KR (Korea) dropping 9% and the Russian extension represented in Cyrillic characters, .рф, dropping by 17% despite it being hugely popular when it was launched in 2012.
Final word
According to Verisign (provider of Internet infrastructure services for the networked world), there were seven million domains added to the Internet in Q2 2012; meaning the total number of generic and ccTLD names registered worldwide is almost 250 million. Globally, registrations have grown by 11.9% since Q2 2011; we can only wait and see what will happen when the new gTLDs hit the Internet.