The pandemic has multiplied the .it domains

2020 had already offered ample ideas in terms of domain names: the impact of Covid-19 on .it domains has already been photographed in advance by the Registry.it and highlighted how much commitment and imagination there has been around this phenomenon. The need to respond to the changes taking place and the shock of the lockdown, however, has led to a dynamism that goes beyond the direct response to the pandemic and the need to bring online sites focused on this type of information. It is a dynamism made up of small businesses, impromptu initiatives, attempts to bring activities and professionalism online to react to the emerging situation.

.it Registry: domains at the time of the pandemic

This is how the Registro.it traced the quantitative profile of what happened in those moments:

Looking at the trend between January and October of last year, the Italians registered 428,788 new domain names. it, of these almost half (49%) belong to natural persons, while 41% was registered by companies, a figure that goes against the trend when compared with the entire registry of Italian domains, where companies make up over 50% of the typology, against just 32% of individuals. But the most important aspect concerns freelancers: with almost 30,000 new domains registered, the digital presence of this category has grown by 35% in just one year: looking only at April 2020, we are talking about + 113% compared to the same. month of 2019. A significant leap that also applies to the other two types of assignees (individuals at + 51% and companies at + 56% in the comparison between April 2020 and April 2019).

All the numbers seem to indicate the same interpretative direction: urgent economic and work reasons have led professionals to a state of sudden need, creating online the gateway to activities previously closed to the Web. domain registration represents the overall picture of each of these individual activities, the first symptom of a sudden activism triggered precisely by the multiplication of states of difficulty.

.it: dominates the north

Today the “Map” of the domains continues to favor the north, where the regions with the highest number of .it addresses are concentrated in proportion to the resident population. This special ranking sees Trentino Alto Adige excel, followed by Lombardy, Tuscany, Valle d'Aosta, Piedmont and Veneto. Basilicata, Sicily and Calabria close the ranking, denoting a completely different approach to the online market.

On the provincial front, Milan conquers the record for penetration rate, with 538 domains per 10,000 inhabitants, followed by Bolzano (483 ), Florence (448) and Rimini (436). Tuscany also places Siena in the top ten (426). Unfortunately, in the queue there are only the South and the Islands: all the last twenty positions, with Crotone (149), Caltanissetta (139) and Enna (135) in the queue.

The data provided by the Registro.it allow to read between the lines the strengths and weaknesses of various Italian areas also in entrepreneurial terms: it is not just a question of macro-enterprise or micro-enterprise, but above all a divergent propensity for online and internationalization. On these fronts too, it will be necessary to work intensively to revive the economic fabric of the post-pandemic country.