RESTON, VA – Verisign, the company that is the authoritative registry for the .com and .net generic top-level domain names (TLDs), released their 3rd quarter 2023 Domain Name Industry Brief (DNIB) this week, which reveals that by the end of the latest quarter, total domain registrations across all TLDs worldwide have reached 359.3 million.
That number represents a 2.4 percent increase year over year, amounting to an additional 8.5 million domains being registered worldwide.
While the overall total saw an increase by the end of the third quarter, there were some fluctuations amongst individual TLDs; for example, the world’s most popular TLD, the “.com” domain, saw an unusually slight decrease, going from 161.3 million at the end of the second quarter to 160.8 million. In addition, the .net TLD held on to approximately the same number of registrations that it’s been at for several years now, hovering just above 13 million.
Industry experts such as Ron Jackson of DNJournal.com called this “a rare tick down“ for .com domain names as the number of .com domains in the registry rarely decreases.
Total country code top-level domain (ccTLD) registrations saw an additional 5.4 million domains added over the past year by the end of the third quarter, representing a 4.1 percent increase. By the number of registrations, the top 10 ccTLDs remained in the same order in Q3 that they were in at the end of Q2: .cn (China), .de (Germany), .uk (United Kingdom), .nl (Netherlands), .ru (Russia), .br (Brazil), .au (Australia), .fr (France), .eu (European Union) and .it (Italy).
Meanwhile, the total number of domain name registrations for new gTLDs (new generic top-level domains) added an additional 2.9 million domains by the end of Q three 2023, representing a significant year-over-year increase of 10.6 percent.
Domain investor John Colascione, owner of the Registrating.com domain registration service, said this latest report is significant specifically for its “.com” and nGTLD data.
“I think it is very interesting that while global registrations of the king of all names, the” .com” domain actually dropped, an extremely uncommon event in any report, the newer alternative domain names such as “.xyz,” “.online,” etc., actually grew by over 10%. It’s a significant signal that business owners who need a good domain name are being forced into considering alternative options other than the typical .com domain.
According to Verisign’s DNIB website, “The Domain Name Industry Brief Quarterly Report reviews the state of the domain name industry each quarter through a variety of statistical and analytical research, as well as relevant industry insights. Verisign provides this report to highlight important trends in domain name registrations, including key performance indicators and growth opportunities, to industry analysts, media, and businesses.”
For those interested in alternative domain name registration data and statistics, available data can be tracked for free using the website https://ntldstats.com, a service that allows the public to view current market share data for individual domain registries.
