The Council of European National Top level Domain Registries (CENTR) released its global TLD report today, stating that the global TLD market grew 1.4% year over year at the end of first quarter this year. The report, CENTRstats Global TLD Report 2018/1, has also indicated that 44% of domain names globally are country code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs) and 56% are generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs). “These figures have not changed significantly over the past year or two, despite the addition of hundreds of new gTLDs in that period.”

Here are some additional highlights from the report:

— The European ccTLD market grew 3.6% YOY and continues a period of stable growth (see chart) with some ccTLDs even reversing the slowing growth seen in previous years. The stabilization in growth is in part due to a decline in average deletion rates along with flat rates of new domains and renews. The TLD market in Europe is estimated at 100 million domains (locally registered ccTLD & gTLDs) of which 59% is made up of European-based ccTLDs—an increase of around 1% YOY.

— Combined gTLDs grew in total 0.1% YOY. Of the legacy gTLDs, .com and .info are the ones to have maintained consistent positive growth over the past year. .com has around 71% of the global gTLD market, with the rest attributed to other legacy gTLDs (18%) and new gTLDs at 11%. A third of all new gTLDs (2012 ICANN application round) have contracted over the past 12 months. Median growth among geographic gTLDs was 1.9% YOY. This group has some of the lowest rates of domain parking among all new gTLDs.