On April 7, 2021, the Russian ccTLD .RU will turn 27 years old. Today, almost 5 million second-level domain names are registered in the domain, which makes .RU the world’s fifth most popular ccTLD and the eighth most popular top-level domain. Of these registrations, 96.7% of domain names have been delegated.
In .RU 4.4 million names, or 88.3% of all registrations, are in active use. 61.4% of them have websites, 19.3% are used only for email, and 4.5% of active domain names redirect.
Almost 16% of domain names in .RU are over 10 years old, and about 31% of domains are less than one year old. .RU now has over two million registrants in total. Only 39,000 (1.9%) of them own 10 or more names, while the number of registrants managing one domain has reached 1.58 million (75.7% of all .RU registrants). Registrants are served by 83 accredited registrars in 12 cities of Russia. There are 231 domains per 100 individual registrants and 273 domains per 100 entity registrants.
“Here’s wishing a happy .RU birthday celebration to all those involved in its birth and to all those engaged in its development – all our registrars, registrants, hosting providers, all our friends and partners, and all Russian internet users. Over the past year, .RU has grown slightly, while its registration rate for new domain names is quite high, with about 4,200 domains registered per day on average. In addition, we are now seeing significantly more interest in the secondary market for domain names in .RU, which also speaks to its demand among our users. Over the year, the number of domain name renewals increased by 1.5%, and the number of delegated domains grew by more than 1%. .RU is growing and developing, and continues to be Russians’ favorite domain,” said Andrey Vorobyev, Director of the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ.
