Global Domain Registrations Rose By 3 Million Since Last Year But  New Verisign Report Shows .Com and .Net Down, ccTLDs and Non .Com gTLDs Up

 VeriSign, (the administrator of the .com and .net TLDs) has released their latest quarterly Domain Name Industry Brief (DNIB) covering the 3rd quarter of 2024. This update showed that the total number of domain registrations across all TLDs worldwide ended the most recent quarter at 362.3 million. That is a slight tick down from 362.4 million at the end of the previous quarter but 3 million domains higher than the number at the same point a year earlier, representing a 0.8% year-over-year increase.

.Com remains, by far, the dominant TLD on the Internet but .com's total number of registrations continued a recent trend of slipping from the previous year. With 156.7 million domains at the end of 3Q-2024, .com was down about 4.1 million from the same point in 2023, a 2.5% decline. .Net has continued to tread water each year but wound up with a slight decrease year over year after shedding about 100,000 domains to come in at 12.9 million at the end of 3Q-2024. 

ccTLDs finished the latest quarter with 140.1 million registrations, 2 million more than a year ago, representing a 1.4% increase YOY. New gTLDs enjoyed the largest jump but, being newer, they are of working from a much smaller user base than the .coms and ccTLDs. Still, by adding 5.2 million domains the new Gs hit 35.4 million domains at the end of 3Q-2024, giving them an impressive 17.4% increase year over year. 

(Posted Nov. 5, 2024)  

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