Latest Verisign Quarterly Report Says Worldwide Domain Registrations Increased By Nearly 15 Million In Past Year

Verisign (the administrator of the .com and .net TLDs) has released their latest quarterly Domain Name Industry Brief (.pdf file) covering the 1st quarter of 2020. The report said total domain name registrations across all top-level domains (not just those Verisign operates) rose to 366.8 million at the end of 1Q-2020. That is a rise of approximately 14.9 million domain registrations (or 4.2%) from the same point one year earlier.

The quarter ended with approximately 147.3 million .coms registered -  a jump of 6.3 million (4.5%) year over year. Meanwhile, the .net TLD, that has been sliding for several years, looks like it may finally be stabilizing. Approximately 13.4 million .net domains were registered at the end of 1Q-2020, down 2.9% from 13.8 million a year earlier, but .net lost no ground from the last quarter (4Q-2019) when it also came in at 13. 4 million.

The ccTLDs have finally started seeing a slowdown after several years of high growth. 1Q-2020 ended with 157.4 million country code domains registered worldwide, up just 0.4% (600,000 domains) from a year earlier and they actually went down 200,000 domains from the previous quarter (4Q-2019).

The new gTLDs continue to rebound sharply after some major losses in their first years of operation. The new gTLDs ended 1Q-2020 with 32.3 million domains registered, a 40.7% leap from the 23 million that were registered at the end of the same quarter a year earlier. Of the 9.3 million domains added in the past 12 months, 3 million came in 1Q-2020 indicating continued acceleration.

That and much more valuable information in the full report that you can read here.

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(Posted June 3, 2020)