| Canadian domain name registration study
According to a study by the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA), 70% of Canadians would rather do their online holiday shopping on dot-ca websites than on dot-com sites.
Just over 1,000 Canadian Internet users completed an online survey administered by The Strategic Counsel, a Toronto based market research firm, between November 14 and 20, 2001. The survey was commissioned by CIRA to gauge Canadians' attitudes and perception of the dot-ca Internet domain space.
Other survey highlights relating to Canadian Internet users' attitudes are provided below:
81% agree that Canadian businesses and organizations should use dot-ca for their websites;
71% prefer to use dot-ca website services, rather than dot-com services, because they know dot-ca is Canadian;
73% attribute dot-ca websites to Canadian organizations and companies;
81% attribute dot-com websites to American organizations and companies;
90% believe it is important to have the dot-ca domain as a resource for Canadians;
96% believe it is important for dot-ca domain name registrants to meet certain Canadian presence requirements.
Dot-ca domain name registrations grew from 60,000 to 275,000 when CIRA has assumed responsibility for dot-ca domain names on December 1, 2000. It took 10 years for dot-com to reach 800,000 registrations in Canada. On 2004/11/29 CIRA had 474212 domains registered: that's almost 50000 Canadian domain name registrations a year.
"The dot-ca domain space has seen unprecedented growth this past year and is quickly becoming the Internet domain of choice for Canadians", said Maureen Cubberley, Chair of the CIRA Board of Directors. 'We've always believed that Canadians prefer dot-ca sites for online shopping and services. These survey results are very encouraging.' |