Towards consolidated uses

Domain name creations reached remarkable levels in 2020 and 2021, significantly above those of the last “normal” benchmark year, that is to say 2019. The adoption of digital technology to counter the effects of the crisis played a substantial role in this trend, and has entered into real use.

Following on from a historic record in .fr domain name creations in 2020 (793,441), the 776,514 in 2021 have confirmed the take-up of digital benefits by French users, with create operations still up 12% on 2019.

There were 3,882,448 .fr names in stock at 31 December 2021, compared to 3,670,372 in the same period in 2020, i.e. growth of 5.8% (compared to 7.0% in 2020 and 3.7% in 2019).

This performance also outstrips that of the French market for all TLDs combined, which stood at +3.6%, and exceeds that of the EU zone (+2.9%) and the global market (+0.7%).

.fr still on the rise in France with 38.75% of market share

Posting higher growth than the local market, the .fr TLD has seen its market share continue to increase, reaching 38.75% in 2021 (compared to 38.0% in 2020). This 0.8-point increase exceeds that of the .com TLD at 0.6 points. It is also interesting to note that the market share of .fr has constantly risen for the past 5 years, with a total increase of 3.1 points, while .com has only gained 1.9 points.

Changes in market share in France (2017-2021)