ZebraDomain.com

In the past 6 or so years the global domain name market has more than tripled in size, from around 50 million registered domains by the end of 2002 to over 177 million in late 2008. Howevr the crisis affecting .

While .com was, is and probably will stay for years to come the dominant TLD (with about 50% of the total domain market in late 2008), other TLDs (both local TLDs and generic) have become increasingly more common.

When we look at the numbers we can see the global economic crisis reflected in the domain market. If in 2007 the total number of .com grew from about 58 million to over 70 million (an increase of about 12 million), in 2008 the total number of .com domains grew from 71 million to 78 million (about 7 million). 2009 so far seems even bleaker with a total of just over 80 million in the beginning of May (a total increase of only 1.5 million).

Other gTLDs such as .net and .org also slewed down their growth during 2008 and 2009. When we look at .mobi (the mobile gTLD) we see an even grimmer picture. The .mobi gTLD grew from about 450,000 total domains in April 2007 to a maximum of over 950,000 in October 2008. However since than the total number of domains actually decreased to about 830,000 in May 2009.

When it comes to ccTLDs .cn (China) is defiantly the hottest name to look for. During 2007 the total number of .cn domains (including .com.cn, .net.cn, .edu.cn etc.) grew from a about 1.8 million to an unbelievable 9 million. In 2008 .cn continued to grow but in a slower rate (from about 10 million to 13.5 million domains). However 2009 seem to hit the .cn pretty hard with an actual decrease in the total number of .cn domains (from a maximum of just over 14 million in February to 13.5 million in April).

So what can we learn from all of this? The sad and rather unsurprising truth is that the domain market was hit by the economic crisis. The more shocking news is how deep the domain market was affected. The drop in .mobi domains might not be a surprise (many experts have been asking whether this TLD is doomed) but the drop in the .cn is unprecedented and even it could be explained as a result of several factors it is clear that the status of the world economy had much to do with it. If the economic situation will not improve in the next few months we might actually see a drop in the total number of .com domains.

One last point. When looking at the internet as a whole (not just domain names but actual new websites) things look pretty much the same with a 50% drop in the number of new websites.

Some good general internet statistics could be found on hosterstats. .cn specific statistics can be found here. We shall keep tracking this topic for changes over the next months.