Domain name .nl has grown in numbers in 2021

SIDN is the administrator of the .nl domain and, according to SIDN itself, it is one of the safest domains in the world. SIDN recently announced a net growth of 119,000 .nl domain names compared to a year earlier. Incidentally, this is less than the 206,000 that joined in 2020. SIDN feared that entrepreneurs who went online during the first lockdown, would cancel after a year. In the end, it turned out that due to the corona crisis, many entrepreneurs made the permanent switch to (partially) online.

Registrations
The number of new registrations was relatively high, mainly in the spring and autumn. In total, 900,000 new domain names were registered in 2021. In 2020 this was 1,040,000. Spread over 2021, a total of 781,000 domain names were discontinued.

Digitization biggest driver
Digitization appears to be the biggest driver of growth. In 2020, almost 100 percent of all Dutch starters will use online as part of their business activities. At the end of 2020, 84 percent of all Dutch companies had a website. SIDN expects this to grow to 90 percent. A quarter of all companies generated more than 1 percent of their turnover from e-commerce in 2021.

Grow existing companies
New online channels were opened with the domain name .nl, not only for starters, but also for existing companies. Many wholesalers started a separate label to be able to supply directly to end customers. Furthermore, service providers discovered that many physical activities could be performed more efficiently online than offline.

Threat of cybercrime
More and more entrepreneurs have to deal with online attacks. Ransomware in particular was in the news a lot. The Anti Phishing Working Group reported that the number of phishing attacks broke records. According to a survey by ABN AMRO, two thirds of SME entrepreneurs indicate that they do not believe that they would be interesting (enough) for a cyber attack. In contrast to the SME entrepreneurs, larger organizations took more measures. At the end of 2021, more than 300 brand and trade names were protected by SIDN Trademark Watch.

Fewer fake online stores
Thanks to the research by SIDN Labs, the fight against fake online stores has been successful. In 2019, almost 4,500 fake online stores were taken offline. Around the holidays in 2019, they found the most fake online stores. Cyber ​​criminals capitalize on trends, which in this case were the holidays. SIDN states that it will have identified few fake online stores by 2021. In this same year, for example, the peak around the holidays did not occur. In November and December in 2021, they found 101 suspicious online stores, 36 of which turned out to be fake online stores.