Israel's Domain Namespaces in 2025
Data, Trends, and Developments

In line with the overall growth of the namespace, the volume of new domain registrations in 2025 increased and was approximately 8% higher than in the previous year.
Compared to the prior year, fewer domain names expired during the year. In addition, new registrations exceeded expirations, and as a result, the demand index of the .il namespace remained positive in 2025, standing at 1.1. This value is consistent with recent years, with the exception of the COVID-19 period, which was characterized by an unusually high volume of new registrations.
Consistent with the monthly growth pattern, the lower chart also highlights the months in which expirations slightly exceeded new registrations — April, and August through October — corresponding to the Jewish holiday periods.

The “Demand Index” is the ratio between the number of new domains registered during the year and the number of domains that expired due to non-renewal/deletion. When the index is greater than 1, there are more new registrations than expirations and deletions; when it is less than 1, there are fewer new registrations and more deletions and expirations.

Domain names can be registered and renewed for a limited term, ranging from one year to five years.
Until 2020, it was possible to register or renew a domain under the .il extension for a maximum of two years. Since 2020, it has been possible to choose a registration or renewal term of up to five years.

The data shows that over the years, the prevailing preference has been to register and renew domains for a one-year term.

In 2025, the share of new domain registrations for longer terms (3-5 years) increased compared to previous years and accounted for 10% of all new registrations.

A similar pattern is reflected in renewals during 2025, with 10% of renewed domain names extended for longer terms (3-5 years), a higher proportion than in the preceding three years.

In 2010, ISOC-IL opened the option to register Hebrew domain names under the .il extension.
These are hybrid domains combining both Hebrew and Latin (English) characters. For example:
איגוד-האינטרנט.org.il
In 2020, the .ישראל extension was allocated to ISOC-IL, allowing for the registration of domain names containing only Hebrew characters.
At the same time, it was decided to stop allowing new registrations in the hybrid format under .il, although the option to renew already registered domains remains available.

We monitor how domains are used, examining whether they point to active, developed websites with meaningful content (High Content), to websites under construction or basic landing pages (Low Content), or whether they do not lead to any content at all (Errors).

Approximately half (52%) of .il* domains are actively used with developed websites. Among those:
Security – The majority (87%) of domains with developed content have an SSL certificate and operate secure websites using the HTTPS protocol.
Email Use – Most domains with developed content (76%) have an MX record indicating an e-mail server responsible for receiving emails for the domain.
Redirects – Only 8% of domains redirect to other domains or URLs.

About one-third of .il domains are relatively new, registered within the last two years. Approximately one-fifth of the domains are three to five years old.

Another fifth are six to ten years old.

Two more “mature” groups are the domains aged 11–15 years, which make up 13% of domains, and the domains aged 16–25 years, which account for 12%.

The oldest domains, aged 26–32 years, represent 4% of .il domains.

According to the registration rules, the length of a domain name with the .il extension must not exceed 63 characters and must not be shorter than three characters.

Nevertheless, there are domain names consisting of only one or two characters. The reason is that these were registered prior to the current registration rules, which were established in December 1998 and have since been updated several times in accordance with policy decisions made by ISOC-IL.

This year, we introduced a new data tool that presents the most frequently occurring meaningful character combinations found in new domain registrations each month.

To identify these combinations, a statistical analysis is performed on newly registered domain names. The analysis includes character strings of three or more characters, as well as selected two-character strings that were explicitly included due to their common usage, such as "il" and "dr", and similar abbreviations. Conversely, so-called "stop words" (e.g., conjunctions, prepositions, and definite articles such as "the" and "and"), as well as personal names, are excluded from the analysis.

The published data enables the identification and examination of trends emerging from frequently occurring character combinations, which may reflect broader economic, social, technological, or cultural developments.

The ongoing decline of the Hebrew-language namespace, now continuing for a second consecutive year, is also reflected in the annual volume of new domain registrations, which shows a consistent year-on-year decline. This trend is further compounded by the high number of domain expirations compared to new registrations.

As noted, there are universal challenges associated with the adoption of new TLDs and domain names in non-Latin scripts. It is our hope that increased global awareness among all stakeholders in the relevant industries, together with growing usage and demand by end users, will render these technological challenges a matter of the past.

Since the launch of the Hebrew domain namespace under the .ישראל extension, the prevailing preference has been to register and renew domains for a period of one year.

In 2025, 86% of all new domain registrations were for one year. 8% were registered for two years, and 6% chose to register domains for longer periods of three to five years.

80% of all renewal requests were for one year. 15% were for two years, and 5% for periods of three to five years.

We monitor how domains are used: whether they direct to active websites with meaningful content (High Content), to websites under construction or basic landing pages (Low Content), or whether they do not lead to any content at all (Errors).

About 1000 domains (13%) in the .ישראל* domain namespace direct to High Content websites.

Among those that make significant use of their domain, half leverage the advantages of Hebrew-language branding to redirect to another domain written in Latin characters. This practice is more common with Hebrew domains than the Latin-charactered .il domains, where only 9% redirect to other websites.

Most of the current .ישראל domains (69%) were registered in the launch year, 2022, and are now three years old.

16% of .ישראל domains are between two and three years old, 9% are one year old, and 6% were registered in the past year and are not yet one year old.

According to the registration rules, the length of a domain name in the .ישראל space must not exceed 63 characters and must not be shorter than two characters.

The most common domain length is five characters.

This year, using a new data tool we developed, we analyzed all currently registered domain names in the Hebrew .ישראל namespace. The ten words shown in the image here were found to be the most popular words used in .ישראל domain names.

These results indicate that institutions operating in core sectors of society registered domain names under the Hebrew namespace, including the fields of healthcare, electricity, telecommunications, banking and finance, as well as professions such as legal services and automotive-related professionals.

One noteworthy finding is that the Hebrew word for “Israel” (ישראל) is the most frequently occurring term across all analyzed domain names, even though the TLD string (the same word, ישראל) itself is excluded from the analysis.

Another interesting finding: the words “ישראל” (“Israel”) and “דין” (“law”) are among the ten most frequent terms in the .ישראל namespace, and also appear in their English equivalents – “israel” and “law” – among the ten most frequent terms in the .il namespace.

The Herfindahl-Hirschman Index
(HHI - Herfindahl-Hirschman Index) is a commonly used measure of market concentration used across various industries. It can help assess how concentrated the domain market is in Israel.

In 2016, ISOC-IL ceased operating as a registrar through which domains could be registered and managed, but even in the years preceding 2016 the HHI score already indicated only moderate market concentration.

As the TLD has expanded over the years and more registrars have entered the market, the index has trended downward, moving the market closer to a non-concentrated structure.

A domain holder (registrant) may freely transfer the management of their domain to any other accredited registrar at no cost, at any time.

The top graph shows the number of domain transfers carried out in 2025 compared to previous years.

In 2025, the number of transfers increased by approximately 1,500 compared to the previous year, representing a 25% rise in total transfers. This increase stemmed primarily from the cessation of the registrar Peligon's operation — all domains managed by Peligon were transferred to the registrar Star.

The bottom section shows the “transfer map” for 2025.
The graph on the left displays (anonymously)* the accredited registrars to which the most domains were transferred in 2025 (Transfer In). The graph on the right displays the accredited registrars from which the most domains were transferred in 2025 (Transfer Out).

Domain registration under the Israeli domain namespaces .il and .ישראל is open and available to any entity worldwide.

Israeli domains are primarily registered to entities based in Israel.

The foreign countries leading in registration rates under the Israeli extensions are the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Russia.

Holders of Israeli domain names come from all parts of the country. The map displays the distribution of domain holders (.il and .ישראל combined) by district nationwide.*

The largest share of domain holders reside in central Israel, accounting for 62% of all holders, with the Center District leading (33%), followed by the Tel Aviv District (30%). The Haifa District ranks third, followed by the Jerusalem District in fourth place.

The chart alongside the map presents the distribution for each domain space separately. Compared to the distribution of holders in the .il domain space, the Hebrew domain space (.ישראל) shows greater representation in the Jerusalem District and lower representation in the Tel Aviv and North districts.

*The analysis uses district definitions as established by the Ministry of the Interior.