Growth in the .no domain

This page provides information about the number of new domain names registered within the .no domain. It also shows the proportion of domain names that are continued from year to year.

Number of new registrations per month

Number of new registrations per month [tabell]

The number of new domain names registered has grown right from the start. There have been variances related to particular events. In addition, there are random variations from month to month.

Number of new registrations per month, plotted logarithmically.

In a logarithmic plot, a straight line corresponds to exponential growth. Some segments of the grey trend line are approximately straight. In the periods represent by these segments, the number of new registrations has doubled in a fixed length of time.

Before 1994 the growth in new registrations was irregular, overall doubling every second or third year. During the period 1994–1997, the growth was much greater, doubling within about half a year. Since this, the growth has gradually decreased from doubling every second year to an insigificant growth today. The cause of the higher growth rate during the period 1994–1997 is unknown.

In three cases, the monthly number of registrations is considerably higher than the trend line. Although substantial, these exceptions do not influence the general trend. They can be linked to specific events:

Renewal rate

Norwegian domain name holders is required to renew the domain name actively every year. The number of domain name renewals provides an indication of the stability of the namespace within the .no domain. If a domain is not renewed, warnings are sent to the domain name holder. The domain is only deleted if the holder does not renew it after receipt of the warnings. It thus takes a couple of months before the renewal rate for any given month is finalized and can be used in the statistics below.

At the last comparison with other top-level domains (in 2009) the proportion of domain names that were renewed under .no was high in relation to top-level domains with which it is natural to compare. This shows that domain names within the .no domain are more likely to be registered with a view to long-term use.

The higher renewal rates are probably an effect of three factors:

• Due partly to the restrictive domain name policy we had previously, a relatively large number of users had time to procure good domain names for themselves, which they wished to keep in the long term.

• Organizations register domain names linked to products and businesses with a long lifetime. Since only organizations may register domain names directly within the .no domain, .no domain names are more likely to be registered with a view to long-term use.

• The fact that each domain name holder may register only a limited amount of domain names also contributes to high renewal rates. While only a few domain name holders have used up their quota, the fact that there is a limit still seems to have an effect on the pattern of use.

The high renewal rates mean that .the .no domain has a stable namespace, so that users can expect URLs and email addresses to function in the long term.