Domain Name Growth Slows Down During Recession
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Derek Iwasiuk February 23, 2009
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The latest Domain Name Industry Brief published by internet infrastructure services provider VeriSign shows that the domain name industry has closed 2007 with a total of 177 million domain name registrations worldwide across all of the Top Level Domain Names (TLD). It marks a growth of 16 percent over the previous year.
But while more than 10.1 million new domain names were registered across all of the TLDs in the last quarter of 2008, this represented a decline of 12 percent from the third quarter 2008 and 17 percent from the same quarter in the previous year. According to VeriSign spokesman Tom Galvin the slower growth in new registrations is a reflection of the recession’s impact.
New Registration Growth
VeriSign
The TLDs with the most registrations are .com, .cn (China), .de (Germany), .net, .org, .uk, .info, .nl (The Netherlands), .eu (European Union), and .biz. Among the top 25 largest ccTLDs, .ru (Russian Federation) is the fastest growing domain extension with 11 percent growth quarter over quarter, followed by .cn with 8 percent growth.
The renewal rate for .com and .net domain names for third quarter is approximately 72 percent. According to VeriSign, the struggling domain name parking industry and the changes in earnings per click are among the main reasons for the lower renewal rate. However, the renewal rate for traditional registrations also declines slightly in the third quarter.
The report also spotlights how VeriSign and other enterprises in the global internet community are trying to help people speaking different languages to navigate the internet. This is an important issue as Internet usage is growing fast in countries where the primary language is neither English nor other Latin-based language.
A "universally accessible internet" is a possibility, "but it must be done right," says Jill McNabb, vice president of naming services at VeriSign.
Tobias Wann, European leader of domain name services at VeriSign, explained that the creation of Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs) will surely trigger more growth in the future.
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