New 2024 Global Domain Report Notes “Game Changing” Industry Insights for “.AI”

The report asserts that the impact of AI on the domain industry and its integration into digital platforms is amounting to a game-changing development, having grown a whopping 162% in just one year.

CAMBRIDGE, MA – InterNetX and Sedo Have released their 2024 Global Domain Report, which breaks down the domain industry and examines trends and shifts that are expected in the upcoming year, with the main emphasis being placed upon tech developments and the evolution of AI and its growing influence upon the internet.

The free-to-download 80-page report – of which this article will provide a brief summary – noted that 359.8 million new domains were registered in 2023, and that registrations overall have remained at a constant yet high level, with the numbers from last year representing a 2.5 percent year-over-year increase.

Generic top-level domains (gTLDs):

Despite the fact that a massive number of new domain extensions have been created recently, long-established gTLDs such as .com (159.6 million), .net (13.1 million) and .org (10.8 million) are still the top-registered and used domains in the industry by a wide margin, according to the report.

The aforementioned veteran gTLDs were joined by a slew of new ones in the past year (such as .xyz, .cfd, .app, and .click), with many targeting very specific, niche audiences; however, the report noted that many of these new gTLDs normally redirect towards their .com parents, as opposed to unique sites of their own. Regardless, this new aspect of the gTLD field expanded by 14.7 percent year-over-year, and is expected to continue to grow throughout 2024.

Country code top-level domains (ccTLDs):

The rise of ccTLDs – an internet top-level domain generally used or reserved for a country, sovereign state, or dependent territory – in 2023, including .cn (China), .ru (Russia) and numerous European domains (making up half of the top 20 ccTLDs in the world), showed a large degree of growth over the past year, and these domains are expected to continue to grow in both importance and usage over the course of the upcoming year.

The growing impact of AI on the domain industry

The report asserts that the impact of AI on the domain industry and its integration into digital platforms is amounting to a game-changing development, having grown a whopping 162 percent in use from 2022 to 2023. Not surprisingly, this development has resulted in .ai becoming one of the most popular top-level domains (TLDs) going today, having grown an astonishing 256 percent year-over-year in both registrations and usage.

And unlike some of the new and highly-specified gTLDs referenced above, more and more .ai domains (currently 45 percent and growing) actually point to wholly-unique, stand-alone websites, as opposed to placeholders or .coms.

As the domain industry ventures further into 2024, the report anticipates that tradition and innovation will go hand in hand, and the result will be a gradual transformation where gTLDs will continue to evolve, ccTLDs will grow in significance, and AI will further integrate itself into the status quo.

You can download the 2024 Global Domain Report here.