EURid's latest progress report: '.euphoria' in 2012

The European Registry of Internet Domain Names (EURid) has announced in its latest progress report that registrations under the ‘.eu’ top-level domain (TLD) in the third quarter of 2012 grew by more than 7% for the second consecutive quarter. The third quarter's net growth rate of 7.4%, representing 251,799 domain names, was consistent with the second quarter's 7.6% result and took the total number of domain names registered under ‘.eu’ to 3.67 million.

"‘.eu’ registrations have risen steadily during 2012, with the Q3 results supporting our sustainable growth targets" said EURid’s general manager, Marc Van Wesemael. "During tough economic times, doing business online becomes ever more attractive. I see ‘.eu’’s growth as evidence of this trend across Europe."

Registrations of domain names under ‘.eu’ by residents of many of the 27 member states of the European Union also increased significantly, and the strongest annual growth was in Malta (35.1%), followed by Slovakia (22.3%) and Austria (20.6%). EURid also saw annual growth of ‘.eu’ domain names of over 10% recorded in at least two countries being hit hard by the ongoing economic crisis, namely Greece and Spain, with growth of 16.8% and 11.1% respectively.    

More as a result of the movement of other TLDs, ‘.eu’ slipped one place to 11th spot in the list of the most popular TLDs worldwide. This is at least partly due to the impact of the TLD ‘.tk’ (the country-code TLD for the South Pacific island of Tokelau) which has seen a large increase in registrations, taking the total to over 13 million and making ‘.tk’ the fourth most popular TLD worldwide. It should however be noted that there are no registry fees for ‘.tk’ domain names, which explains their popularity (for further details please see “Rise in volume of ‘.tk’ domain names hides murky side of the internet”). 

David Taylor, Hogan Lovells LLP, Paris