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The world according to country code domains

by — Uncategorized 4 Comments

Here’s what the world would look like if ccTLD registrations were all that mattered.

Graphic of a world map resized according to the number of country code domains registered

This map by Nominet shows the world as sized by country code domain registrations.

What would the world look like if countries were scaled according to registrations of their country code domains?

.UK registry Nominet has published its “The Online World 2019” map (full res version here) that does just this.

The South Pacific island of Tokelau, which has a population of just 1,500, looks the most out of whack. That’s because its .tk domains are given away for free and over 25 million are registered.

A couple of other interesting notes from Nominet:

  • 107% year-on-year growth in Guernsey’s country code domain, .gg, largely driven by the video game and eSports community, for whom the initials “gg” is a common abbreviation for the phrase “good game”
  • The academic community’s interest in Ascension Island’s .ac, which has seen growth of 130% over the past 12 months, as well as the continued growth of Anguilla’s .ai, supported by the continued rise of Artificial Intelligence technology

By my eye, I’d say the UK and Germany look pretty crazy, showing the success of their country code domains.

.Com dominates North America. What about the ROW?

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Country code domains are still the majority outside of North America.

Chart showing dominance of .com in North America and ccTLDs in other regions

Take a look at the chart above. What do you notice?

While .com dominates North America, it is secondary in ICANN’s other four regions.

It’s easy to be United States-centric, but the reality of domain name demand is very different around the world.

Afnic, which operates the French country code domain name .Fr, released a report detailing the domain name market in 2018 that included this chart. It’s a great look at the market and required reading for anyone interested in the current mechanics of the domain name market.

If you travel or live outside the United States, you have undoubtedly seen the importance of country code domains in other regions of the world.

Of course, regions are large and the dominance of .com vs. ccTLDs varies by country. And .com is still quite common in most countries, even those in which the country code domain is the most used.

ccTLDs are, by their nature, limiting. Afnic notes:

These data highlight the difficulty for new entrants to impose themselves faced with “cultural prisms” in one case prioritizing the notions of region and proximity, and in the other case a global approach that overrides any reductive specific feature implied by the TLD chosen.

The report has many other takeaways. Here’s a good one about the registry/registrar dynamic and how some registries need to follow a different strategy:

As we already noted in 2018, the fact remains that the registry – registrar system will no doubt have to change in the future, by increasingly favoring the emergence of specialized or “proximity” resellers, who will take care of marketing nTLDs to the relevant niche markets. The transformation is not an obvious one for every player and remains slow to enter the mores, registrars often considering themselves as wholesalers whose role is not to build and facilitate dealer networks optimized for this or that target. Current and future nTLDs cannot, however, be successful without the changing of the retail system.

Afnic also notes that 50% of new top level domains are potentially “loss-making” if they sell domains for less than $20 wholesale, and 83% if they sell below $10.

The full report is available online.

Country Code Domains – DNW Podcast #208

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Two guests shed light on ccTLDs.

dnw-podcast.Com is king in much of the world, but not in Europe. In many European countries, the country code domain name (ccTLD) is used more often than .com. On today’s show, I talk to two people who live and breathe ccTLDs. First, I talk with Peter Van Roste, who is the General Manager of CENTR, a group that helps European ccTLD managers. We then chat with Jakob Truelsen, the CEO of DK Hostmaster, which manages Denmark’s .DK domain name. Truelsen explains how the group was able to cut down on websites using .DK domains to sell counterfeit goods without wading into the murky area of reviewing content.

Also: Verisign sells security to Neustar, Google tries something new with .New, .AI expired domains, a big domain auction, Zoom.com and much more.

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