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Verisign
has released their latest
quarterly Domain
Name Industry Brief,
covering the closing quarter of 2022 and
wrapping up the past year as a whole. The year
ended with 350.4 million domains across all
TLDs worldwide. That is up 8.7 million from
the end of 2021, representing a growth rate of 2.6%.
However, the rate of growth within domain
categories varied considerably, running from no
growth to double digit gains.
.Com remains,
by far, the the dominant TLD on the Internet but
its growth rate has stalled in recent quarters.
.Com closed 2022 with 160.5 million
registrations, down 400,000 from the
previous quarter, but up a bit (500,000)
from 160 million at the end of 2021 to post
a 0.3% increase year over year. |
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Verisign
operates both .com and .net and the story was
similar for .net. The TLD finished 2022 with
the same number of registrations it had at the end
of the previous quarter, 13.2 million, and
actually slipped a tick year over, down 200,000
from the 13.4 million in force at the end of
2021.
The
"new" gTLDs, as a group, enjoyed
the highest growth rate, 11.1%, but that
category is working from a much smaller base. The
new G's added 2.7 million domains in 2022 to
finish the year with 27.4 million registered
worldwide. However, within the group there are big
differences between the haves and have nots. The 10
biggest new gTLDs account for over half
of all registrations in a group that now has over
1,000 competitors.
The
ccTLDs continued to enjoy a healthy growth
rate, moving up 4.5% after adding 5.7
million domains to close 2022 with 133.1
million registered worldwide. The country code
group, like .com, is working from a much larger
existing base which can make it harder to maintain
high percentage growth rates. The ccTLD category is
82% of the size of .com while the new gTLDs, at this
point, are just 17% of .com's size.
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