.org domains buck the trend as traditional gTLD landscape changes

A major change is happening in the domain name space. Users are abandoning traditional generic top-level domains (gTLDs) in 2024, but .org domains stand out, with more than 11 million registrations, according to domainincite.

The public interest registry announced yesterday that it has surpassed 11 million registered domain names. CEO Jon Nevitt called it “a big moment for our organization.” An analysis of regional file records shows that the 11 million registrations were reached last month. Since the beginning of 2024, about 240,000 domain names have been added to the .org domain zone.

Registrations for most traditional gTLDs launched before 2012 are declining, and in some cases by significant amounts.

Regular readers who have been following the situation on this front know that registrations for .com and .net domains have declined. Since the beginning of the year, .com domain name registrations are down by about 3.4 million and .net domain name registrations are down by about 477,000. In terms of percentages, the .pro domain has suffered the most severe losses over the same period. It started with 718,000 domains and now has only 484,000, a reduction of about one-third in the number of domains.

Larger traditional gTLDs like .info, .biz, .asia and .mobi have all seen registration drops in the tens of thousands. Smaller domains such as .name, .tel, .coop, .museum and .aero also saw a drop in registrations.

It's not fair to judge .xxx domains based on zone size, as the GoDaddy registry sells them primarily as defensive registrations that don't show up in zones, but even so, its registrations are down this year.

Among traditional gTLDs, only .jobs, .cat and .travel saw an increase in registrations this year, but only by a few hundred domains.

The success of .org domains may be due to the strategy of public interest registries. Despite the fact that its contract with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is free of price caps and faces inflation, it has not raised renewal prices like other traditional gTLDs with large customer bases.