ICANN Publishes Updated Domain Name Marketplace Indicators

The Shine Is Fading:  New gTLDs Drop From 2018 to 2019

Say It Aint So Dept……

The latest information from ICANN reveals an interesting statistic.  The number of NEW Top Level Domains in service actually fell by 444,747 from 2018 to 2019.  This is not a good sign, and indicates folks are wise to the fact that a lot of new TLDs have no set renewal and some have skyrocketed in price upon renewal.  The Legacy TLDs, like .com, .net, and .org, actually increased by 2,544,947 from the same time period.  The country code TLDs also showed a healthy increase.

Below is the news release from ICANN, with the links so that you can download their spreadsheet file and study it yourself.

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LOS ANGELES – 9 December 2019 – The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) today announced the release of updated industry metrics as part of its Domain Name Marketplace Indicators initiative. The initiative presents statistics related to generic top-level domains (gTLDs) and country code top-level domains (ccTLDs) with the aim of fostering greater transparency for reputable information on the evolution of the domain name marketplace.

View the updated metrics here.

The metrics released as part of this initiative encompass three categories and six dimensions:

  • Robust competition: registrant choice, registrant domain adoption, service provider marketplace entry, service provider competition.
  • Marketplace stability: service provider contractual compliance.
  • Trust: industry safeguards.

ICANN plans to continue to expand the initiative’s coverage of shortlisted indicators and publish these statistics twice a year in order to track progress against its goal of supporting the evolution of the domain name marketplace to be robust, stable, and trusted.

A community Advisory Panel worked with ICANN to identify relevant indicators that form part of the current schema. Concurrent to the release of these Version 1.0 marketplace indicators, the ICANN organization will continue to work with the community and the Advisory Panel to evaluate additional enhancements that might be incorporated into this initiative in the future.

About ICANN

ICANN‘s mission is to help ensure a stable, secure, and unified global Internet. To reach another person on the Internet, you need to type an address – a name or a number – into your computer or other device. That address must be unique so computers know where to find each other. ICANN helps coordinate and support these unique identifiers across the world. ICANN was formed in 1998 as a not-for-profit public-benefit corporation with a community of participants from all over the world.