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.

Domain registrations

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.

Domain geography

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
 Slovakia 24 397 24397
Germany
Germany
 Germany 14 923 14923
United States
United States
 United States 10 079 10079
United Kingdom
United Kingdom
 United Kingdom 5 419 5419
Poland
Poland
 Poland 5 123 5123
France
France
 France 4 358 4358
Netherlands
Netherlands
 Netherlands 3 951 3951
Switzerland
Switzerland
 Switzerland 3 133 3133
Bahamas
Bahamas
 Bahamas 2 999 2999
China
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.