Domain name and internet security giant Verisign have stated in their Q1 2018 report that the total number of TLD (Top-level-domain) registrations have reached 333.8 million, an increase of 1.4 million approximately. The key factors behind this rise according to Verisign are the rising awareness of ccTLDs as well as a preference for the classic .COM and .NET TLDs.
According to the report released by Verisign, businesses in the U.K., New Zealand, China, Germany, the Netherlands and Russia are on the rise. It further states that the rise in their businesses has affected their respective ccTLDs positively with China leading the ccTLD race at 21.4 million registrations, New Zealand with 19.9 million, and Germany with 16.3 million by the end of Q1 2018.
As compared to the last quarter of 2017, Verisign states that ccTLD registrations rose by 0.1% in Q1 2018 over the previous quarter, and compared to the Q1 2017, they rose by 2.2%. The report also says that the number of registrations for .COM and .NET domains have risen as a result of a general affinity towards them in spite of new gTLDs released almost every month.
Verisign have revealed in their report that the .COM and .NET TLDs had a combined total of approximately 148.3 million domain name registrations at the end of Q1 2018, with an increase of approximately 1.9 million domain name registrations, or 1.3 percent, as compared to the fourth quarter of 2017.
Verisign claims that the rise of .COM and .NET registrations indirectly signal that the holders of new gTLDs need to work harder to make the latter relevant to new and upcoming businesses worldwide. It will be interesting to see how the holders of these new gTLDs respond to this rise.