Number of Irish domains registered rises but country still lags neighbours

The number of .ie domains registered in the first half of the year is up 11 per cent versus the same period in 2016 and the best performance since 2011.

Overall, 20,255 new registrations were filed over the six months under review. This is equivalent to 112 registrations each day.

New figures from the IE Domain Registry (IEDR), the company that manages and maintains the country domain name, show the total number of registered .ie domains as of June 30th, was 230,611.

More than half of the newly registered domains were filed by small and medium sized businesses.

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Some 98 per cent of the total were recorded in the Republic, with 1,082 from outside of Ireland and 324 in Northern Ireland.

The growth in registrations locally was largely confined to Dublin, Cork and Galway.

IEDR chief executive David Curtin said poor broadband connectivity in rural areas meant that Ireland ranks poorly compared to our European neighbours in terms of registrations.

Ireland is currently placed 18th out of 22 European nations for the number of country domain names per 1,000 people, with 49. This is ahead of some countries with larger populations, such as France and Spain, but significantly behind the likes of Denmark.

“Ireland still lacks a complete high-speed broadband network, and continued delays to the National Broadband Plan will not only disadvantage rural citizens, but stifle the growth of rural SMEs, making them less competitive,” said Mr Curtin.

The longest domain name recorded in Ireland in the first half was the catchy irishwordsofwisdomoureldersusedtosayandothertreasuresfoundalong.ie, which at 63 characters is over six times longer than the average .ie domain length of 10 characters.