359.3 million – that’s the number of domain registrations active at the end of the third quarter in 2023, according to the latest report from VeriSign. The figures show that domain registrations have risen by 2.4% when compared to the same period last year. 2023 has seen an extra 8.5 million registrations for that period.
There is a smaller rise compared with the second period of 2023. The increase seen there is around 2.7 million registrations, which comes in at less than one per cent (0.8% in all).
Digging deeper to learn more about domain name registration data
As always, the report from VeriSign gives more insight into what is happening in the world of domain names. Fresh registrations for .com and .net domains reached 9.9 million by the end of the third quarter for 2023 – the same as we saw for the same period last year. The .com and .net names are the two most sought-after options when registering new domains, with the trend mainly steady in that area.
However, the most popular of the lot, the .com top-level domain, dipped slightly between the second and third quarters in 2023. There were around half a million fewer registrations during the third quarter, as the .com domains dipped from 161.3 million to 160.8 million. So, a small drop when considering the numbers involved, yet it is rare for this to occur. It’s not likely to continue though, and it more likely to be simply an anomaly among the other data.
What about the other entries in the top five TLDs?
Country-level domains are still being registered in their millions. Figures to the end of September 2023 show that .com is way out in front with the 160.8 million we just mentioned. The second most common TLD to be registered is .cn for Chinese websites, with 20.3 million.
Germany takes third place with 17.6 million domain registrations for .de, while the .net option we mentioned above came into fourth place with 13.2 million. There was another gap between the fourth and fifth places, dropping to 10.9 million domain name registrations for the UK option, .uk.
To give another option, sixth place goes to the .org registration with 10.8 million in action. Everything below that drops into the single million figures by quite some distance. The top five (or 10) look slightly different when considering country-based registrations, although those already mentioned obviously fare well.
It will be interesting to see whether the trends continue for the final quarter of 2023. Perhaps the most notable piece of data is the dip for the .com TLD, although it seems unlikely that this universal web address is one that we’re falling out of love with. There will always be blips in areas such as this, and while half a million sounds like a lot, it doesn’t amount to much when you’re talking in the hundreds of millions we are here. We’ll still await the next batch of data with interest, though.