Anyone seeking to establish an online presence appears to have limitless options for reserving Internet domain names. But the question remains: which providers do registrants prefer? The WhoisXML API research team set out to find the answer by analyzing the most popular registrars and registrant countries for top gTLDs and ccTLDs.

Download the white paper now to gain insights into selected gTLDs (i.e., .com, .info, .net, .online, .org, .shop, .site, .store, .top, and .xyz) and ccTLDs (i.e., .au, .fr, .it, .uk, and .us), their associated registrars, and registrant countries.

Methodology

Our datasets contained several hundred million domain names, sourced from the latest available quarterly gTLD and ccTLD files from WHOIS Database Download. Specifically, the volumes of each dataset were:

We then extracted the registrar and registrant countries from the domains’ WHOIS records to analyze the most prevalent entities and locations.

Overall Findings

Our study led us to the following insights:

• GoDaddy stood out as the preferred registrar, considering the aggregated volume of registered domains across gTLD and ccTLD spaces.
• While global registrars mostly dominated the gTLD domains, national players like German registrar IONOS were also prominent among ccTLDs, following GoDaddy.
• The majority of gTLD domains were registered in the U.S.
• All ccTLDs were predominantly registered in their alluded countries (e.g., France was the most popular registrant country for .fr), except for one outlier, whose domains were mostly registered abroad.

  

Registrant Countries Under Scrutiny

We analyzed the domains’ registrant countries in an effort to determine the general location of domain owners or their businesses. Surprisingly, we detected a couple of unusual trends.

First was Iceland, the 4th most prevalent registrant country among the gTLDs. Specifically, more than 14 million domains were registered in the country, whose population was only 395,129 at the time of writing. That translated to 35 domains per capita.

The next interesting trend we found was with .au domains. It stood out for having about three-fourths of its domains registered outside Australia. Almost half of the .au domains in our dataset were registered in Italy.

Our research uncovered significant TLD trends, particularly on the registrar and registrant county distribution of selected gTLDs and ccTLDs. For one, we found that while global domain registrars dominate both TLD spaces, national players appear to have a significant share in the ccTLD space.

Curious to see the other top players in the gTLD and ccTLD market? Download our complete white paper “Who Dominates the Internet? A Look at the Top Domain Registrars and Registrant Countries across TLDs” now.