CZ.NIC, z.s.p.o, is an interest association of legal entities, founded in 1998 by leading providers of Internet services in the Czech Republic. The principal duties and activities of the association include operation of the .CZ domain registry and DNS servers for the .CZ top-level domain (TLD).
The annual domain report is an on-line publication that offers key statistical facts about the status and dynamics of the Czech country-code TLD (ccTLD), which is primarily used by subjects in the Czech Republic – individuals and organisations.
The graphs and tables are organised into several sections illustrating various aspects of the registry and domain operation. Most charts are interactive: additional information can be obtained by placing the mouse cursor over graphical components of such a chart. In multivariate graphs, each variable can be switched off or on by clicking on the corresponding entry in the legend.
In the previous domain report we observed clear signs of saturation in the number of second-level domains registered under .CZ, and predicted a stagnation or even decline in 2020. However, the following chart shows that this prediction turned out to be false: the number of domains rose to 1.37 million, which means a 3.2% increase compared to the end of 2019.
The rather significant growth in 2020 was undoubtedly caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. This can be seen in the following chart that shows monthly domain registrations in the last three years. The largest relative increases in 2020 can be observed in the periods March–June and October–December that coincide with the pandemic waves.
At least 2,500 domains registered in 2020 are likely to be directly connected to the pandemic in that their labels contain at least one of twelve selected COVID-related word stems, such as corona/korona, covid, virus or respirator. Daily numbers of such registrations, as well as their cumulative sum, are displayed in the next chart. See ADAM report 1/2020 for additional details.
Each domain is registered for a concrete domain holder, which may be a person or a company – each holder type has a share of almost exactly 50%. Most of the .CZ domains (1.27 million, i.e. 92.8%) naturally have holders with Czech addresses. The following table and map show their distribution among the 14 regions of the Czech Republic, as well as the number of domains per 100 citizens.
Region | Domains | Domains per 100 citizens |
---|---|---|
Praha | 409 145 | 31.03 |
Jihomoravský | 154 490 | 12.98 |
Středočeský | 132 276 | 9.57 |
Moravskoslezský | 96 842 | 8.06 |
Zlínský | 58 226 | 9.99 |
Jihočeský | 52 858 | 8.21 |
Ústecký | 50 667 | 6.17 |
Pardubický | 48 096 | 9.22 |
Královéhradecký | 47 883 | 8.68 |
Olomoucký | 44 539 | 7.05 |
Plzeňský | 42 713 | 7.25 |
Vysočina | 37 291 | 7.31 |
Liberecký | 36 786 | 8.30 |
Karlovarský | 15 404 | 5.23 |
Unknown | 45 496 | NA |
The share of foreign domain holders is currently 7.2%. Top ten countries are shown in the table below.
Country | Domains | ||
---|---|---|---|
Slovakia
|
Slovakia | 24 397 | 24397 |
Germany
|
Germany | 14 923 | 14923 |
United States
|
United States | 10 079 | 10079 |
United Kingdom
|
United Kingdom | 5 419 | 5419 |
Poland
|
Poland | 5 123 | 5123 |
France
|
France | 4 358 | 4358 |
Netherlands
|
Netherlands | 3 951 | 3951 |
Switzerland
|
Switzerland | 3 133 | 3133 |
Bahamas
|
Bahamas | 2 999 | 2999 |
China
|
China | 2 526 | 2526 |
Other | 21 463 | 21463 |
The changes in last three years are shown in the following slope graph. An interesting case is Bahamas – the number of domains held there grew from 70 to 2,999.