Domain Registration (Russian Market)

Domains

A separate article is devoted to the development of each of the Russian domain zones on TAdviser:

• .Ru (domain)
• .RF (domain)
• .SU (domain)
• .RUS (domain)

2024: Reduction of the share of the domain.ru among new sites to 68.4%

The share of the most popular Russian domain.ru in 2024 amounted to 68.4% against 70.8% a year earlier. This is evidenced by Yandex data released in August 2025.

As Kommersant writes with reference to this study, about 8.7% of new sites in Russia in 2024 were created in the.com domain, which is more than 8.2% a year ago. The share of the.rf domain, on the contrary, has significantly decreased during this time - from 8.6% to 6.5%.

At the same time, the share of alternative domains increased: in 2023 it was measured at 12.5%, and a year later - 16.4%. The most popular among alternative domains was.online, in second place -.space, closes the top three.site domain, the publication says.

The Runiti Group of Companies (unites Ru-Center, Reg.ru and SpaceWeb) told the publication that a decrease in the share of.ru domains in new projects does not mean a loss of popularity of the national domain zone.

In the near future, the number of registered domains in the.ru zone may exceed 6 million, but Russian business is not limited only to.ru and.rf. Most short and memorable names are already occupied, and high demand naturally increases their cost in the secondary market. New companies and projects are looking for more affordable alternatives, - explained in Runiti.

The general RUVDS Nikita Tsaplin director linked the decline in the popularity of the.ru domain with the fact that the owners get rid of less attractive domains, and international registrars refuse to serve Russian clients. Alternative domains may look more "marketing attractive," Tsaplin continues. These domains are not managed by regulators and the requirements associated with obtaining names in them can be much easier, the source added. Kommersant^[1]

2023: Sanctioned Russian companies resume issuing IP addresses

The international Internet registrar RIPE NCC has resumed issuing new IP addresses to Russian participants who have come under sanctions. The organization reported this in mid-June 2023. Read more here.

2019:49 registrars in.RU and.RF domains

In domains. RU and. RF was accredited by the registrar of Klondike Group from Moscow, representing the agency market for digital communications in Russia. Thus, now 49 registrars are accredited in the.RU and.RF zones. This was reported on July 25, 2019 at the Coordination Center for Domains.RU/.RF. Read more here.

2018:46 registrars register 1.4 million domains

Director of the Coordination Center for Domains.RU/.RF Andrei Vorobyov spoke in December 2018 about how things are in the domain industry. In the largest national domain.RU there are more than 5 million domain names, in the RF - more than 800 thousand. Since the beginning of 2018 the Russian domains , more than 1.4 million domain names have been registered in two, 46 accredited registrars are engaged in this.

Interestingly, in 2018, the share of domain names registered by Russians in new top-level domains significantly decreased. If in 2017 there were 5.7% of such domain names from all registered in Russia, then in 2018 their share is only 0.4%. The share of national domains among all names that are used in Russia increased over the year from 78.3% to 80.9%.

"Despite the fact that country domains around the world are now showing very restrained growth or even decline, the Russian national domains.RU and.RF retained their positions in the world rankings, ranking fifth in the number of registered domain names among all national top-level domains. In addition, the share of Russian registrations of names in the national domains of.RU and.RF has increased: in 2018 it is 80.9%, which is 2.6 percentage points higher than it was at the end of 2017. This suggests that Russian national domains are still in well-deserved demand and trust among Russian users, "said Andrei Vorobyov

2017

The backup register of national domains has begun work

The reserve register of national Russian domains, developed by MSK-IX and the Coordination Center for Domains.RU/.RF, began its work on September 1. The reserve register reduces the consequences of risks for the stability and security of the domain name system in the event of a failure of the main registry of domains.RU and.РФ and allows you to save a copy of the file of the zone.RU and.РФ in any critical situation.

Domains in the zones.Ru and.RF have risen sharply in price

The Coordination Center of the National Internet Domain (CC), the regulator of domain zones.Ru and.RF, decided to increase selling prices for domains in these zones. The cost of one domain will increase from 70 rubles. per year to 120 rubles. in year. We are talking about the price for domain registrars.

The proposal to increase prices for domains was put forward by the director of the CC Andrei Vorobyov. He laid new prices in the draft budget of the organization for 2017. The Council approved this budget.

The CC recalled that the cost of registering domains in the.Ru zone has not increased since 2007. And in the.RF zone, the current price has been fixed since the start of the zone in 2011. The issue of increasing current prices has been discussed since 2012 and should not have come as a surprise, we are sure of the CC.

The administrator of the domain zones.Ru,.RF and.Su is the Technical Center of the Internet (TCI) - the "daughter" of the CC. It is this organization that receives funds from registrars for domain registration. For end users, the prices are set by the registrars themselves, they are in the range of 500-900 rubles. per year^[2].

The CC believes that raising the price will make it possible to improve the working conditions of registrars and conduct wide-ranging marketing programs to promote the Russian national domains.RU and.RF, modernize the technical infrastructure and develop the registration system.

2015: CC Annual Report on Domain Space

The next issue of the annual report of the Coordination Center of Domains.RU/.RF"Russian Domain Space 2015: Results and Prospects of Development" has been published. The report reflects the most important and interesting events that took place in 2015 in the Russian and global domain industry, provides detailed information on the development of the domain market.

2014: A jump in prices for the services of foreign registrars

In 2014, a number of changes took place in the.RU domain zone and one of the noticeable trends was a decrease in the share of foreign companies in the hosting services segment. So, according to the statistical service StatOnline.ru, the total number of domains served by the German provider Hetzner decreased by 8%, and the Dutch LeaseWeb - by more than 30%. First of all, such a decline was the result of a change in the exchange rate of the national Russian currency, in which the cost of services of foreign providers increased sharply. In addition, in the current international situation, organizations operating in Russia are increasingly choosing domestic hosting service providers as the most stable and safe. The change in user preferences allowed domestic companies to strengthen their positions, in particular, REG.RU, which for 2015 is the largest Russian hosting provider in the.RU zone and occupies a share of more than 10% among the top 20 market players.

According to the Statdom statistics service, the largest number of administrators, after Russia, are in Ukraine, Belarus, Germany and the United States. Nevertheless, in 2014, the number of addresses registered in America in the.RU zone decreased by a third - from 18 to almost 12 thousand. Among the Russian regions, Moscow, the Moscow region and St. Petersburg traditionally lead in terms of the number of registered domains, and the Sverdlovsk region and Krasnodar Territory close the top five.

The number of registered domains in the.RU zone has reached almost 5 million, of which 3.6 million are addresses of existing sites or aliases, that is, backup addresses.

Gradually, the IPv6 protocol becomes widespread in the.RU zone - in 2014 the number of domains using only IPv6 increased by more than 8 times - from 87 to 755. Nevertheless, 90% of addresses in the.RU zone continue to be located on IPv4 and slightly more than 9% use two protocol stacks in parallel - IPv6 and IPv4.

2012: Domain market volume 2.18 billion rubles

According to the study "Runet Economics 2012-2013," conducted by RAEK and the Higher School of Economics, the volume of the domain market: 2.18 billion rubles.

The Coordination Center of the National Internet Domain summed up the results of 2012 in the field of Network development in Russia. The organization is responsible for the development of two geographical areas -. SU and. RU, as well as one national -. RF, which together contain more than 5 million domains. Of these, 4.27 million are registered in the zone. RU and another 780 thousand - in. RF.

At the end of 2012, the Ru domain dropped from fourth to sixth place in the ranking of national domains in the world.

At the same time, the number of domains in the zone is growing. RU continues while the zone. The Russian Federation even slightly decreased - 937 thousand domains were registered at the peak. This is due to the fact that the excitement around the national zone has passed and the domains registered for future use are not used.

continue to clean the area. RF from unused domains, so in the future a slight decrease in their number is possible, - said Andrei Kolesnikov, head of the Coordination Center. "Note that the proportion of domains used in this zone continues to increase."

Percentage of domains used in the zone. The Russian Federation in 2012 increased to 75% (in 2011 it was at the level of 70%). In the zone. RU this share is 91%.

About 40% of domain names are registered by residents of two capitals.

At the end of 2012, of the European domain zones, only Dutch.nl (5.1 million), British .uk (10.3 million) and German.de (15.3 million) overtake Russian.ru. At the same time, the.ru domain became the leader in growth rates among European domains and took third place in this indicator in the world - an increase of 17.9%. Only the Chinese national domain zone.cn and the.tk zone belonging to the Takelau archipelago, which grew 116% thanks to free registration, are growing faster.

By the number of registered domain names, the.ru zone ranks 10th in the world. In addition to the three European ones, it is overtaken by the already mentioned national.cn (7.5 million) and.tk (14.5 million) and "international".com,.net,.org and.info, with the latter "shrinking" by 9% over the year - to 7.5 million. The traditional leader remains the.com zone, where at the end of 2012 there were 106.4 million registered second-level domains.

2011

5 registrars control 90% of the market

According to the results of 2011, the top five largest registrars accounted for 90.2% of registered domain names in the.RU domain and 87.7% of registered domain names in the.RF domain. Compared to 2010, the picture has remained practically unchanged and it is still not easy for small registrars to compete with the "giants" of the domain market. The market leader has slightly reduced his share, but at the same time continues to increase the share of the second largest registrar.

As of December 31, 2011, 26 registrars were accredited in the.RU domain, and 24 registrars in the.RF domain.

In 2011, the accreditation of 3 registrars was terminated: ANO "Regional Network Information Center" and OJSC "COMSTAR - United TeleSystems" in connection with the liquidation of the legal entity, LLC "No" - on a voluntary basis due to the inability to continue to perform these functions.

The Coordination Center, in accordance with the current procedures, accepted support for information about domain names registered earlier in LLC "No," and is working on transferring support for information about these domain names to other accredited registrars based on requests from administrators. Also in 2011, 3 new registrars were accredited in the.RU and.RF domains: Register 1 LLC, United Domain Names LLC and Perspektiva LLC.

In July 2011 Irkutsk , a pilot regional seminar "Domain space Russia and new opportunities for your business" was held in Russia, aimed at expanding the use of national domains (. of the Russian Federation RU and.RF) in the interests of the Russian Internet community and attracting regional companies to accreditation as domain name registrars.

According to the results of 2011, the top five largest registrars accounted for 90.2% of registered domain names in the.RU domain and 87.7% of registered domain names in the.RF domain. Compared to 2010, the picture has remained practically unchanged and it is still not easy for small registrars to compete with the "giants" of the domain market. The market leader has slightly reduced his share, but at the same time continues to increase the share of the second largest registrar.

• As of September 21, 2011: there are only 3,499,755 domains in the.RU zone, 895 711 domains in the RF zone. Domain. RF ranks 15th in the ranking of national top-level domains Europe (first place in the domain). Germany

• Compared to the first quarter of 2010, in the first quarter of 2011, the Russian domain space increased 1.5 times. This was due to the rapid growth of domain name registrations in the new Cyrillic domain.RF. The total number of domain names in the Russian national domains.RU and.RF in March 2011 amounted to more than 4 million.

Appearance of a mega-registrar: RBC bought Ru-Center

On March 17, 2011, it became known that an unconditional leader arose in the domain registration market in Russia: Hosting Community, a member of the RBC group, buys the Ru-Center group. The deal was planned to be completed by the end of 2011, but this did not happen until June 2012.

April 7, 1994 - the first entry about the domain.ru

They tried to introduce International Internet Day several times on different dates, but none of them became traditional. In Russia, the date of September 30 has taken root. And it all started with the fact that in 1998 the Moscow company "IT Infoart Stars" sent out a proposal to firms and organizations to support its initiative, consisting of two points: to appoint September 30 as "Internet Day," to celebrate it annually and conduct a "census of the population of the Russian-speaking Internet." At that time, the number of users reached 1 million people. In addition, some consider Runet Day to be apel 7, since on this day in 1994 an entry about the domain appeared in the international database of national top-level domains. In 1998, World Internet Day was authorized by Pope John Paul II. The patron saint of the Internet has not yet been officially approved, although since 2000 the temporary patronage of the Network has been provided by Isidore of Seville, a Spanish bishop who lived in 560-636. He is considered the first encyclopedist to have a significant influence on the history of the Middle Ages. Therefore, in many countries of the world, the feast of the Web is celebrated on April 4 - the day of the ascension of St. Isidore of Seville. Many countries also have national Internet Days. They are usually timed to coincide with some events related to the introduction of the Internet in this country. In addition, on January 27, the world community celebrates the "International Day WITHOUT the Internet." The organizer of this holiday is enthusiasts around the world, conducting their ideas through the online community "Do Be."

April 7, 1994 The first Russian domain zone.ru was launched, and to date it has managed to overcome the milestone of 3,000,000 registered names and enter the TOP-10 of the largest national zones in the world. The domain zone.ru today occupies a solid sixth place in the number of registered domains, second only to.de (Germany),.uk (Great Britain),.cn (China ),.nl (Netherlands) and.eu (European Union).

See also

Domain Registration (Global Market)

Notes