Domain Analytic
Monthly Insights Radar - Newly Registered Domain Analytics for May 2026
Written By Sameer Asad, WhoisFreaks Team Published: June 18, 2026, Last Updated: June 22, 2026
Domain Analytic
Written By Sameer Asad, WhoisFreaks Team Published: June 18, 2026, Last Updated: June 22, 2026
Newly registered domains (NRDs) totaled 9,786,316 in May 2026, up 2.3% from April's 9.57 million. The top of the TLD market held its shape: .com rose to 3,837,428 registrations (+3.4%) and .top added 12.0% to reach 423,126. Most of the movement happened in the secondary tier. .app rose 68.7% (rank 19 to 15), .cn climbed 61.2% (rank 17 to 10), and .de fell 27.6%, dropping from rank 4 to rank 9 after two strong months. One data event stands out: on May 16, every TLD, country, and registrar line shows a sharp single-day trough. The pattern points to a registry ingestion gap rather than a real drop in demand.
The registrar table moved more than the TLD table. Dynadot Inc grew 55.9% to 858,770 registrations, passing Spaceship for the #3 global slot. NameSilo recovered 37.4%. Both suggest more competition forming below the GoDaddy and Namecheap lead. Together those two registrars crossed 2.4 million registrations and held 34.6% of Top-20 volume. By geography, the United States was flat at 2,051,970 registrations (+1.0%), Iceland rose 12.2% to 785,987, and Japan grew 74.0%, almost doubling its April count. Data quality improved on two of three dimensions, with registrar metadata reaching 96.5% cleaned, the highest coverage in the series and the most reliable lens for this analysis.
May produced the most active secondary-tier turnover since March. Two TLDs gained more than 60%, one corrected sharply, and four new names refreshed the bottom half of the table. While .com rose steadily and .top kept climbing, the more telling moves were the .cn and .app gains and the unwinding of .de's spring run.
What this says:
The top five TLDs together make up 68.5% of all NRDs in May within the Top-20 cohort. "Others" (ranks #6 to #20) hold the remaining 31.5%.
.com stayed in its recent high range for most of May, with most days landing between 125k and 155k. It hit monthly highs on May 9 (~160k) and May 19 (~158k), both mid-week in line with peak business activity. On May 16 it dropped to roughly 30k, well below any prior trough and visible as a sharp V-shaped valley. Because every other category shows the same trough on the same day, this is a data ingestion gap, not lost demand, and the series recovered by May 17. After recovering, .com held a 120k to 130k range for the final week and closed near 97k on May 31, slightly below its seasonal average and in line with month-end processing.
Unlike April's front-loaded pattern, .top built steadily through May and peaked late, reaching about 34k on May 27 and again on May 26, which suggests a late-month campaign event. The first three weeks held a moderate range with a 20k spike on May 3 before settling into the 8k to 15k band through mid-month. .top also reflected the May 16 trough, dropping to near 1.5k before rebounding to 18.5k the next day. The late-month acceleration matches the back-half campaign pattern this TLD has shown since Q1 2026.
.xyz kept its burst profile, posting sharp peaks of ~23k (May 2), ~25k (May 5), ~23k (May 11), and ~24.5k (May 18) against a baseline of 5k to 9k between spikes. The 25k reading on May 5 was the strongest single day, in line with the TLD's recurring early and mid-month campaign windows. The May 16 trough compressed it to near zero, followed by an immediate recovery to 24.5k on May 18. The final week settled into a 5k to 14k range with modest peaks around May 28 to 29 before trailing off to 4k at month-end.
.org kept its usual stability, with most days between 7k and 11k, a pattern that has held across the past four months. The strongest day was May 19 (~12k), which lined up with the same mid-month window visible in .com. On May 16 it fell to about 2k, its lowest single day in the series, before fully recovering. The month closed in the 8k to 9k range, in line with +1.8% monthly growth and the TLD's demand-driven rather than campaign-driven profile.
.net held a narrow daily range for most of May, between 5k and 9k on most days, typical for a legacy utility TLD. One isolated peak of about 16k on May 21 stands out against the surrounding baseline and suggests a short promotional event or batch registration. Like every other TLD it dropped on May 16, to roughly 2.5k, before recovering to 9k the following day. The final week returned to its usual 7k to 8k range, ending near 8k, with no clear trend in either direction.Country-wise analysis
The country picture in May was broad-based growth across nearly the whole Top-20, a contrast with April's US-dominated month. Iceland's rebound, Japan's jump, and Lithuania's steady climb added range to the overall +4.7% expansion of Top-20 country volume, while Sweden's pullback from its April peak confirmed that the debut at #4 was at least partly campaign-driven.
No new countries entered. All twenty positions were held by countries already present in April.
None. May is the first month in the series where all twenty Top-20 country positions carry over from the prior month.
What this says:
The top five countries together make up 76.8% of all NRDs in May within the Top-20 cohort. "Others" (ranks #6 to #20) hold the remaining 23.2%.
US daily registrations held a wide but coherent range through most of May, between roughly 50k and 80k on business days with the usual weekend troughs. A late-month surge on May 27 (~105k) delivered the largest single day of the month before the series corrected to 65k over the final two days. On May 16 the US dropped to about 18k, the most severe intraday collapse of any Top-5 country, before recovering to 70k on May 17. That makes it the clearest country-level signal that May 16 was a registry event. Outside the anomaly and the May 27 surge, the US held a steady 60k to 75k band through the middle three weeks.
Iceland traded in a wide 17k to 34k daily band through May, with persistent swings between peaks and troughs. The strongest day was May 7 (~34k), followed by secondary peaks of about 31k (May 8) and 32k (May 21). On May 16 it fell to roughly 5.5k, its lowest reading since the series began, before recovering to 30k on May 17. The final week settled into a 20k to 27k range and closed near 19k on May 31, which fits a +12.2% monthly gain concentrated in the first three weeks.
China opened May in a 7k to 11k daily range and built through the month, peaking at about 23k on May 20, its strongest single day since early 2026. Growth was distributed rather than driven by one early-month burst, with consistent readings above 10k from around May 9 and a 14k to 15k floor through the final ten days. On May 16 it dropped to roughly 3.5k, a sharp move given its usual 10k-plus level, before recovering quickly. The month closed near 13k, a healthy finish that fed the +4.8% overall monthly gain and matched the .cn movement in the TLD data.
Lithuania opened with a sharp burst to about 9,000 on May 6, the monthly high, before correcting to a more typical 4k to 6.5k range for the rest of the month. From May 9 it held a stable 4.5k to 6.5k band with moderate daily swings and no further extreme outliers. It dropped to roughly 1,600 on May 16 before recovering, matching the cross-category pattern. May ended near 4,200, in line with a +15.8% monthly gain that came more from the early-month spike than any late rally.Brazil
Brazil's May profile came down to two sharp single-day spikes, about 8,400 on May 5 and 8,900 on May 17, against a floor of roughly 3k to 5.5k. Outside those two days, daily registrations were stable, which points to a consistent registrant base rather than campaign activity. The May 16 trough (~3.7k) is immediately followed by the month's highest day (~8.9k on May 17), so it looks like suppressed May 16 registrations were processed as a catch-up batch on the 17th. May closed near 3,700, with the +9.3% monthly gain driven largely by the two outlier days.
The registrar table moved on Dynadot. A 55.9% gain made it the global #3 registrar, alongside NameSilo's recovery and continued consolidation at the top. The platform-native names that appeared in April (Cloudflare, Squarespace, Wix) have settled into steadier positions, which confirms they are lasting participants rather than one-month entries.
What this says:
Within the top five registrars (with "Others" covering ranks #6 to #20), the May mix is:
The top-two share dipped to 34.6% from April's 36.7% as Dynadot's gain compressed the leaders' proportional weight. The 38.5% "Others" share points to a healthy competitive mid-tier, a level of dispersion last seen before Spaceship's concentrated early-2026 growth. If Dynadot holds its pace, it could narrow the gap with Namecheap in coming months.
GoDaddy held a stable daily range through most of May, with most days between 30k and 40k registrations. A sharp single-day spike on May 18 (~57k) delivered the month's peak, in line with the late-week outlier days seen since April. On May 16 it dropped to about 11k, roughly a 75% reduction from its usual level and the clearest registrar-level signal of the ingestion gap. After the anomaly and the peak, GoDaddy closed in the 30k to 43k range, ending near 30k on May 31.Namecheap, Inc
Namecheap was consistent through May, with most days in the 25k to 35k range and few outliers either way. Peaks of about 36k to 37k came in early May (around May 7 to 8) and again in the third week (around May 21). On May 16 it collapsed to roughly 8k, then recovered to 34k on May 17, matching the cross-category pattern. Daily volume trended slightly lower through the final week, ending near 20k, a softer close that partly explains the month's proportional share decline against Dynadot.
Dynadot's chart has a clear inflection. The first three weeks held a 9k to 25k range, but from around May 19 it shifted into a higher band, peaking at about 41k on May 21. That peak was not isolated; it was the apex of a sustained 10-day elevated period that drove most of the +55.9% gain. Even mid-surge, Dynadot shows the May 16 trough to about 7k, which confirms the anomaly was market-wide. The month ended near 15k, a floor well above the 10k to 12k baseline at the start of May, so part of the second-half move looks structural rather than purely campaign-driven.
After April's front-loaded campaign spike, Spaceship settled into a steadier range in May, mostly between 18k and 25k for the middle three weeks. An isolated mid-month burst to about 39k on May 12 was the strongest reading of the month, well above the surrounding baseline and in line with the registrar's history of concentrated single-day spikes. On May 16 it dropped to about 7k before recovering to 23k the next day. The final week settled into a 15k to 20k range, ending near 15k, a softer floor that reflects both the May 16 correction and Spaceship ceding ground to Dynadot.
Hostinger had one of the steadiest daily profiles in the Top-5, with most of May trading in a 12k to 16k band, in line with its gradual share gains since late 2025. A brief move above the ceiling produced the month's peak on May 22 (~17k), followed by a return to range within two days. On May 16 it fell to about 4k, a sharper relative drop than the absolute figure suggests given the narrow operating band, before recovering to 15k by May 17. May ended near 11.5k, slightly below the usual floor and consistent with a mild month-end processing dip rather than any real deterioration.
Of 9,786,316 total records, 9,447,808 (96.5%) are cleaned and 338,508 (3.46%) are redacted. Registrar data reached its highest clean-rate in the series, up from April's 90.1%. The gain of nearly six percentage points is the largest single month-over-month data quality improvement in any dimension the series has recorded. Whether it reflects a lasting change in data collection or a transient pipeline effect is an open question for June.
Registrar metadata is now close to complete, which makes it the most reliable lens for attribution and concentration analysis with minimal redaction bias. Registrar-based segmentation, spike attribution, and competitive share analysis can all be run with higher confidence this month than in any prior month, and the smaller gap between raw and cleaned counts makes cross-month trend comparison more dependable.
Of 9,786,316 total records, 5,214,503 (53.3%) are cleaned and 4,571,813 (46.7%) are redacted. Address availability improved from April's 51.9%, the second straight month above the halfway mark. The two-month trend (April 51.9% to May 53.3%) reads as a gradual normalization rather than a single pipeline event, though it is moving slowly compared with the registrar dimension.
Address-based geo-segmentation benefits from the improvement but should still be cross-referenced with registrar and TLD signals, since nearly half of records remain redacted. If the slow trend holds, it would meaningfully expand the portion of the dataset usable for geographic analysis within three to four months.
Of 9,786,316 records evaluated for contact fields, 9,095,884 (92.9%) are redacted and only 690,432 (7.06%) carry usable contact details. Redaction is essentially unchanged from April's 92.4%, which confirms the stability of GDPR-aligned privacy practices across the registrant population. Contact fields stay shielded for more than nine in ten records, a structural feature of the post-GDPR dataset that is unlikely to shift without a regulatory change. Owner-attribution and contact-based work must keep relying on registrar patterns, infrastructure metadata, TLD behavior, and domain-level analysis rather than direct contact data from WHOIS.
The two series operate on different scales with a shared mid-month anomaly. "Newly" registered domains ranged between about 250k and 415k per day under normal conditions, while "Newly Cleaned" stayed near the chart floor, averaging 15k to 30k most days, a scale split consistent with prior months. The "Newly" series peaked on May 8 (~415k), the strongest single-day ingest of the month, with a secondary cluster of elevated days around May 19 to 20 (375k to 410k) that weighted the front half.
On May 16 the "Newly" line dropped to about 110k, a contraction of more than 70% from the surrounding baseline, before recovering to 340k on May 17. This is the sharpest mid-month dip in the "Newly" series since the January 22 anomaly, and combined with the simultaneous drops across every category chart, it confirms a registry-level ingestion gap rather than a real demand collapse. A "Newly Cleaned" batch of about 70k around May 17 to 18, the day after the "Newly" trough, fits a pipeline catch-up processing domains delayed by the May 16 gap.
Generic TLDs make up 7,728,194 (79%) of registrations. Country-code TLDs account for 2,058,122 (21%), roughly one in five new domains. The 79% / 21% split is effectively unchanged from April (79.3% / 20.7%), which means the secondary-tier reshuffle, the .cn and .app gains, the .de correction, and the .cc re-entry, mostly involved gTLDs swapping positions among themselves while the overall gTLD/ccTLD balance held.
For analysis, keep separate baselines for gTLDs and ccTLDs to tell whether a registration spike is a global campaign (gTLD-driven) or a regional adoption signal (ccTLD-driven). With the ccTLD share stable near 21% for three months, any future move away from that level would be a meaningful signal.
Executive Summary The Newly Registered Domain (NRD) dataset for June 2026 recorded 10,029,022 total registrations, a modest +2.5% gain month-over-month from May's 9.79 million and the first time the series has crossed the ten-million mark. The top of the TLD market held firm. .com stayed dominant at 3,732,610 registrations, softening a slight -2.7% but still commanding nearly half of all Top-20 volume. The secondary tier was upended by the .xyz Explosion: .xyz surged +247.8% from 274,736 to 955
26 min read
Executive Summary The Newly Registered Domain (NRD) landscape in April 2026 was defined by strong momentum across builder-tier and legacy extensions, with total registrations across the dataset climbing +5.3% month-over-month to 9.57 million. The defining story was .top, which surged +41.9% on the back of multiple high-amplitude registration bursts to reclaim the #2 global TLD position. While .com held flat as the unmoved market anchor at 3.71 million registrations, the secondary tier saw notab
18 min read