ccTLDs Current Trends

Country Code Top Level Domains, or ccTLDs, are expanding across the globe. CENTR takes a closer look at current trends surrounding ccTLDs.

CENTR, The Council of European National Top Level Domain Registries, states that European ccTLDs have passed 67 million registrations with a total growth of 0.7% last quarter in their latest DomainWire report. ccTLDs, or Country Code Top Level Domains, are web address endings reserved for a specific country, territory or sovereign state.

For example: Australia – .au, Japan – .jp, United Kingdom – .uk

Some ccTLDs have a local presence requirement that states that in order to register a specific regional domain you must have a local address attached to the registration. Put simply, to register a .London you must have a London address.

CENTR reports that they are responsible for 80% of all registered country code domains worldwide, totaling 135,455,695 domain names. The top 20 largest ccTLDs represent about 82% of ccTLD registration and 38% of all domain names, including generic TLDs like .com and .net.

The web address ending .tk (Tokelau) holds the largest total registrations at 28.6 million, almost doubling the second place ccTLD .de (Germany). Tokelau has a slight advantage on registrations due to no local presence requirements and low registration costs. China (.ch) is third in total ccLTD registrations with 11.7 million and .uk (United Kingdom) comes in at fourth with 10.6 million.

Colombia leads in total growth in last quarter with 8.4% more registrations ending in .co. China holds second place with 4.1% and Italy in third with 2.0%. Total growth across domains as a whole is only at 1.3% showing that ccTLDs are quickly becoming a leader in registered domains.

Local presence requirements do pose something of a disadvantage for nations with smaller populations than the heavily populated China or Russia, and CENTR devoted a portion of their report based on per capita statistics. Presently .nl (Netherlands) hold the most ccTLD domains per capita with 33 registrations for every 100 residents, and Switzerland’s ccTLD .ch is second with 24 registrations per 100 residents. Trailing behind are Denmark (.dk), Germany (.de) and the United Kingdom (.uk).

DomainWire reported that total new domain registrations, including the popular .xyz, .club and .berlin show a total 33% growth disproving early skeptics that gTLDs would be a fad and quickly fade out of the domain industry. The CENTR report shows that unique web address endings are most likely here to stay so we might as well jump on board.