While the economy might be suffering many of the domain name registries have been reporting their statistics for the second quarter of 2020 and most have seen increases in registrations. The move to online, as has been noted just about everywhere, has been much bigger than anyone could have predicted.
Domain name registrations are always going to be a mixed bag, so while the upward trend is positive how many of them will be retained at renewal time is an unknown.
In the case of Ireland and the .ie country code domain name the numbers up dramatically, with a year on year increase of over 50% for the quarter. When you look at the monthly numbers the increase is even more dramatic.
April 2020 was up by 31% on April 2019 with a total of 5500 new registrations.
May 2020 resulted in the highest volume of new registrations in the .ie ccTLD’s history with over 7000 new domains registered, which was an increase of 60% year on year.
June 2020 had over 6500 new domain registrations which is an increase of 62% on the same period last year.
Will the trend continue for the rest of 2020? It’s hard to predict, though it’s pretty clear that the Irish government is encouraging the digital economy at the moment.
As of time of writing the .ie country code stands at just under 300 thousand domains registered (296,405).
The reported numbers above refer to new registrations and do not account for deletions due to non-renewal, though they obviously impact the total number of active registrations.
Over the last few years the .ie registration rules have become much simpler, while the top registrars in the market have also been engaged in a price war with the top 4 selling new registrations and transfers below cost most of the time.
Disclosure: Blacknight is the largest single .ie registrar and I also sit on the Policy Advisory Committee of .ie.
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