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EURid has published its 2023 annual report, which shows how the domain name market has changed compared with previous years.
As EURid, the registry of the .eu, .ею and .ευ domain names, has pointed out, 2023 was a year of innovation and commitment, with strategic growth, technological development and active community engagement at the centre of its work.
Let’s look at the most important figures in the report!
More than 3.6 million .eu domain names last year
One of the most important statistics in EURid’s summary is that .eu domain name registrations showed a slight downward trend in 2023, though not a dramatic one.
Last year 3,684,820 domains were registered, a decrease of 0.47% compared with the 3,702,264 registered in 2022, or 17,444 fewer domain names.
This is not a dramatic difference, as the figures have hovered around 3.7 million for years; however, the market exceeded that figure in both 2021 and 2022, and it last stayed below it in 2020, with 3,684,984 registered domains.
Most domain names are linked to online shops
Interestingly, according to EURid, most .eu domain names still end up as online shops. Nearly 15% of the 3.6 million domains are linked to an online shop, but websites in IT, manufacturing and marketing also took a large share, averaging 8%.
In addition, 5% of the domain names sold host websites related to education or lifestyle, while domains for arts, community and financial services each have a share of around 4%.
After mapping the websites linked to the registered domain names with its WebClass tool, EURid found that a significant proportion of them have rich, user-generated content.
Most .eu domain registrations still come from Germany
Naturally, EURid can trace most .eu domain registrations to European Union countries, but it is a pity that Hungary did not even make the top ten.
Countries such as Belgium, Austria and Spain, with between 134,000 and 144,000 .eu domain names each in 2023, finished ahead of us.
Not surprisingly, Germany once again took first place, with nearly 1 million .eu domains – 985,934 to be exact – leaving everyone else far behind.
In second place is the Netherlands with 456,298 registrations, followed by France with 306,477 .eu domains, while Italy and Poland also made the top five with well over 200,000 each.
Only 90 .eu domain names were disputed
Although millions of .eu domain names were registered last year, the number of disputes was surprisingly low.
According to EURid’s figures, it only had to step in to settle a domain name dispute in 90 cases. We have no statistics on how these ended, but in most cases the dispute was about several parties claiming the same domain name.
More and more .eu domains are secured with DNSSEC
Although registration numbers fell slightly, the number of .eu domain names that have adopted DNSSEC rose significantly.
DNSSEC is a security protocol that helps reduce the chance of visitors ending up on a fake website when they type in the holder’s domain name.
In 2023, the number of domains with DNSSEC grew by 23% compared with 2022, reaching 646,880, and EURid stressed that it continues to encourage domain holders to adopt the protocol.
.eu domain names brought in more than €13 million
Last but not least, EURid also disclosed that registrations of .eu domain names generated more than €13 million in revenue in 2023. That is an increase of nearly €1 million compared with €12,335,292 in 2022.
Of course, a large part of this amount went on operating costs, marketing and communications, but the largest share – more than €5 million – went on human resources, which is no surprise, as EURid employed a total of 53 people across its four offices last year.