Reglikedomain industry desk

Jump in Q2 but still down from last year — Registered domains

Jump in Q2 but still down from last year — Registered domains

Uplift in Q2 can’t mask year-over-year decline.

Chart shows top level domains down 2.8 million year over year, but .com and .net up 8.5 million

Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN) published its Q2 2021 Domain Name Industry Brief (pdf) this afternoon. The note calculates the total base of registered domain names and tracks recent trends.

As stated by the note, the total number of registered domains shot up 3.8 million during Q2, closing at 367.3 million. That’s still down by 2.8 million from the end of Q2 2020, though.

You can blame a precipitous fall in registered fresh top level domains for most of the deficit. As stated by Verisign’s calculations, fresh top level domains fell by 27.8% year over year to 22.9 million. Many fresh TLD providers that offered cheap or free domain registrations have dialed back promotions. Fresh TLDs stabilized this year, though, ticking up slightly between the end of Q1 and Q2.

Country code domains gained 1.2 million during the quarter but are 2.4 million lower than the end of Q2 last year. That’s thanks to free .tk domain names. Excluding .tk domains, the base of registered ccTLD domains is up 0.3% year over year.

Also on the wire

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