VeriSign recently released its Domain Name Industry Brief for August 2007. VeriSign is the registry operator for .com, .net, .cc, and .tv domain names and is involved ‘digital infrastructure’ products.
Their report makes very interesting reading for domainers and for those interested in the development of the internet, more generally. It provides some interesting statistics about domain names in general as well as Country Code Top Level (ccTLD) domain names. I recommend that you read the report itself, but some of the report findings relevant to the .uk ccTLD include:-
- World-wide there was a total of 14.5 million registrations across over 240 domain name extensions in quarter 2 of 2007. This is an all time high.
- Country Code Top Level (ccTLD) domain names made a significant contribution to this growth. The number of registrations of the .uk ccTLD is the second largest of all ccTLD registrations. The .de (Germany) extension is the largest and just behind the UK there is .cn (China), .nl (Netherlands) and .eu (European Union).
- Around one third of all CCTLD registrations are either .uk or .de.
The study also highlighted a 5% drop in the number of .eu registrations compared with the previous quarter. It suggested that lower registration rates reflect the fact that names are not being renewed during the first renewal cycle which began in the Spring.
Conclusions
It remains unclear whether the decline in renewals of .eu domains indicates a buying opportunity or indicates long term decline in this domain. I have never liked .eu as an extension – European countries have always had too much hostility to one another to abandon their country code domains anytime soon. Only time will tell.
However, I am very much encouraged by the growth in the .uk ccTLD. Clearly a significant proportion of any growth come from domainers. I also expect, as the number of quality domains available to register declines further, the secondary market for .uk domains will become more bouyant.