We love reports here at Blacknight. We love looking at numbers and gleaning new insights into the overall domain and hosting industry. IEDR, the .IE Domain Registry, have released their annual Domain Profile Report and it contains a great piece of new information – .IE domains have now overtaken .COM domains as the preferred domain in the Irish internet space.
As Ireland’s biggest .IE domain registrar, this information pleases us immensely. We’ve issued a press release.
Irish customers now prefer .IE over .COM and it’s no longer a difficult sell. For years, the focus was always on .COM, but now .IE is holding its own against the other major domain names thanks to IEDR’s liberalisation in 2018. Getting a .IE domain is easier than ever before, and consumers and businesses are taking advantage of it.
Source: IEDR
According to the report, .IE domains now account for 50% of all hosted domains in Ireland, and .COM has shrunk to 33%. In 2019, there were 50,167 new .IE domain registrations, bringing the national registry to over 280,000 total registered .IE domains. This strong growth shows the importance of the .IE domain to Ireland’s internet space and to the wider European internet in the age of Brexit. Many UK and other European countries doing business in Ireland, now prefer to use .IE when interacting with Irish customers. The IEDR report confirms this with a notable .5% increase in UK registrations of .IE.
As the UK exits the EU, we expect more UK companies to secure their .IE domains and keep hosting their Irish customer data within the EU as they have to continue to comply with GDPR and other EU data privacy regulations in order to do business with their EU and Irish customers. .IE means trust.
Source: IEDR
Blacknight is the biggest .IE domain registrar and we have years of experience in registering and managing this crucial Irish internet asset. New registrations for .IE domains have flourished since the liberalisation of registrations in 2018, making it easier for anyone with an Irish connection to register their domain with registrars like us.
Other interesting insights from the report:
- IE Domain Registry recorded 50,167 new .ie registrations in 2019
- +27% increase in number of .ie domains registered by individuals
- ‘Smart’, ‘green’, and ‘tech’ among most popular words used in .ie domain names in 2019
- Over half (51%) of all .ie domains now have SSL security certification, up +45% YoY
Do you have a fun or innovative use of a .IE domain? Share it with us in the comments below!