Key findings
- 153,229 primary hostnames combine a tracked trademark, a trust grade of D, E or F, and an online store or detectable payment provider, June 2026.
- Beauty and Fashion leads the risk categories with 20,615 sites (16.9% of categorized risk sites), ahead of Work (15,333) and Home and Garden (12,186).
- Beauty and Fashion and Electronics - the two classic counterfeit categories - together account for 25.8% of categorized risk sites.
- .shop is the standout TLD in the risk subset: 23,348 sites, 15.2% of all risk sites, versus 1.4% of the wider trademark-mention pool - a concentration of roughly 11x.
- Trust grade D is the largest band in the risk subset (79,856 sites, 52.1%), followed by E (55,704) and F (17,669).
- The wider pool of 8,217,316 trademark-mentioning sites is dominated by incidental references: the three most-detected trademarks alone account for 64.5% of it.
Methodology
- Risk subset (the basis of this report): the 153,229 primary hostnames that combine trademark detection with a trust grade of D, E or F and an online store or a detectable payment provider. Trust grade D-F indicates a site scores poorly on legitimacy signals such as contact information, legal pages and transparency; the store or payment condition establishes transactional intent.
- Wider pool: 8,217,316 primary hostnames where at least one tracked trademark appears anywhere in the crawled content; 6,789,299 have a classified category and 7,903,872 a known country.
- Detection: keyword matching of a fixed list of roughly 336 tracked trademarks against crawled page content, combined with site categorization. The trademark field carries no ownership test.
- Known limitation, and the reason the wider pool is reported only as context: trademark mentions are overwhelmingly incidental. The three most-detected trademarks account for 64.5% of the wider pool on their own, and the leading entries are mainstream consumer-technology and software brands, typically appearing as app-store badges, document-format notices and hardware specifications rather than as brand abuse. Percentages taken against the wider pool measure how common a trademark mention is, not how common infringement is.
- Known limitation: legitimate resellers, reviewers, news sites and the trademark owners themselves all appear in both the wider pool and, where their trust grade is low, the risk subset. Neither figure is a legal determination of infringement.
- This report names categories and TLDs only. It does not publish trademarks, domains or hostnames.
- Coverage: Of the 390,063,422 primary hostnames in the index, 8,217,316 (2.1%) mention at least one tracked trademark; 6,789,299 of those have a classified category and 7,903,872 a known country. Narrowing to the risk subset - trademark detection plus a trust grade of D, E or F plus an online store or detectable payment provider - leaves 153,229 sites, 1.9% of the wider pool, of which 121,937 have a classified category.
Full indexing methodology - crawling, primary hostname determination, detection and limitations - is documented at /research/methodology.
Risk subset per category (trust grade D-F, store or payment)
Beauty and Fashion leads with 20,615 of the 121,937 categorized risk sites (16.9%), ahead of Work (15,333) and Home and Garden (12,186). Beauty and Fashion plus Electronics together account for 25.8%.
| # | Category | Websites | Share of categorized risk sites | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Beauty and Fashion | 20,615 | 16.9% | |
| 2 | Work | 15,333 | 12.6% | |
| 3 | Home and Garden | 12,186 | 10.0% | |
| 4 | Finance | 11,876 | 9.7% | |
| 5 | Electronics | 10,883 | 8.9% | |
| 6 | Leisure | 8,152 | 6.7% | |
| 7 | IT-services and Telecom | 6,380 | 5.2% | |
| 8 | Multimedia | 6,325 | 5.2% | |
| 9 | Travel and Transport | 5,153 | 4.2% | |
| 10 | Nature | 4,621 | 3.8% | |
| 11 | Sports | 4,373 | 3.6% | |
| 12 | Food and Nutrition | 3,946 | 3.2% | |
| 13 | Health | 2,947 | 2.4% | |
| 14 | Science and Education | 2,448 | 2.0% | |
| 15 | Art | 2,245 | 1.8% | |
| 16 | Entertainment | 1,944 | 1.6% | |
| 17 | Government and Society | 1,941 | 1.6% | |
| 18 | Adult | 569 | 0.5% |
Risk subset per TLD (trust grade D-F, store or payment)
.com holds 74,382 risk sites (48.5%). The outlier is .shop: 23,348 risk sites, 15.2% of the subset, against 1.4% of the wider trademark-mention pool.
| # | TLD | Websites | Share of risk sites | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | .com | 74,382 | 48.5% | |
| 2 | .shop | 23,348 | 15.2% | |
| 3 | .org | 5,367 | 3.5% | |
| 4 | .net | 5,127 | 3.3% | |
| 5 | .app | 2,881 | 1.9% | |
| 6 | .uk | 1,948 | 1.3% | |
| 7 | .id | 1,669 | 1.1% | |
| 8 | .xyz | 1,561 | 1.0% | |
| 9 | .fr | 1,468 | 1.0% | |
| 10 | .store | 1,442 | 0.9% | |
| 11 | .pro | 1,329 | 0.9% | |
| 12 | .cn | 1,212 | 0.8% | |
| 13 | .de | 1,173 | 0.8% | |
| 14 | .co | 1,137 | 0.7% | |
| 15 | .jp | 1,060 | 0.7% |
Risk subset by trust grade
Grade D is the largest band with 79,856 sites (52.1% of the 153,229 risk sites), followed by grade E (55,704) and grade F (17,669).
| # | Trust grade | Websites | Share of risk sites | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | D | 79,856 | 52.1% | |
| 2 | E | 55,704 | 36.4% | |
| 3 | F | 17,669 | 11.5% |
Wider pool: trademark mentions per category (top 15)
Work leads the wider pool with 1,335,010 websites (19.7% of classified sites), followed by IT-services and Telecom (656,694). This ranking reflects where trademarks get mentioned, not where infringement concentrates.
| # | Category | Websites | Share of classified sites | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Work | 1,335,010 | 19.7% | |
| 2 | IT-services and Telecom | 656,694 | 9.7% | |
| 3 | Home and Garden | 601,063 | 8.9% | |
| 4 | Beauty and Fashion | 456,987 | 6.7% | |
| 5 | Finance | 449,840 | 6.6% | |
| 6 | Multimedia | 434,479 | 6.4% | |
| 7 | Leisure | 360,916 | 5.3% | |
| 8 | Travel and Transport | 353,163 | 5.2% | |
| 9 | Electronics | 337,532 | 5.0% | |
| 10 | Science and Education | 275,330 | 4.1% | |
| 11 | Nature | 261,075 | 3.8% | |
| 12 | Food and Nutrition | 242,992 | 3.6% | |
| 13 | Health | 236,155 | 3.5% | |
| 14 | Government and Society | 219,277 | 3.2% | |
| 15 | Art | 206,917 | 3.0% |
Wider pool: trademark mentions per TLD (top 15)
.com holds 4,064,254 of the 8,217,316 sites mentioning a tracked trademark (49.5%); among country TLDs, .de leads with 443,168.
| # | TLD | Websites | Share of trademark-mention pool | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | .com | 4,064,254 | 49.5% | |
| 2 | .de | 443,168 | 5.4% | |
| 3 | .uk | 264,366 | 3.2% | |
| 4 | .org | 213,386 | 2.6% | |
| 5 | .net | 209,581 | 2.6% | |
| 6 | .fr | 148,400 | 1.8% | |
| 7 | .it | 133,899 | 1.6% | |
| 8 | .ru | 126,200 | 1.5% | |
| 9 | .nl | 117,682 | 1.4% | |
| 10 | .shop | 114,099 | 1.4% | |
| 11 | .au | 110,937 | 1.4% | |
| 12 | .br | 102,733 | 1.3% | |
| 13 | .in | 82,518 | 1.0% | |
| 14 | .ca | 80,443 | 1.0% | |
| 15 | .pl | 79,482 | 1.0% |
Wider pool: trademark mentions per hosting country (top 10)
2,113,808 of the 7,903,872 trademark-mentioning sites with a known country are hosted in the United States (26.7%), followed by Canada (739,125) and Germany (637,626).
| # | Country | Websites | Share of sites with known country | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | 2,113,808 | 26.7% | |
| 2 | Canada | 739,125 | 9.4% | |
| 3 | Germany | 637,626 | 8.1% | |
| 4 | United Kingdom | 444,815 | 5.6% | |
| 5 | France | 305,402 | 3.9% | |
| 6 | China | 238,877 | 3.0% | |
| 7 | Italy | 235,274 | 3.0% | |
| 8 | India | 211,931 | 2.7% | |
| 9 | Russia | 194,178 | 2.5% | |
| 10 | Netherlands | 193,688 | 2.5% |
Frequently asked questions
How many websites combine a tracked trademark, low trust, and an online store?
153,229 primary hostnames combine all three signals: a tracked trademark in the site's content, a trust grade of D, E or F, and an online store or detectable payment provider, June 2026. That is 1.9% of the 8,217,316 sites where a tracked trademark appears at all. This subset is a starting point for infringement investigations, not a list of infringing sites.
Does a trademark mention mean a website sells counterfeits?
No, and the great majority of mentions have nothing to do with counterfeiting. The trademark field records that one of roughly 336 tracked trademarks appears somewhere on a site, with no test of whether the site operator owns it. Trademark owners' own sites, authorised resellers, reviewers, news outlets and software-compatibility notices all register. Only in combination with a low trust grade and transactional signals does the data become a useful investigative starting point, and even then it is a signal rather than a verdict.
Which categories carry the most transactional brand-abuse risk?
Among the 121,937 categorized risk sites, Beauty and Fashion leads with 20,615 (16.9%), followed by Work (15,333) and Home and Garden (12,186). Beauty and Fashion and Electronics together account for 25.8%, consistent with the categories most associated with counterfeit goods, June 2026.
Why is .shop so overrepresented in the risk subset?
.shop holds 15.2% of the 153,229 risk sites, against 1.4% of the wider trademark-mention pool - a concentration of roughly 11x. The .shop TLD was designed for online stores, so it draws transactional registrations by default, and its low registration cost and commerce-signalling name appear to attract a disproportionate share of low-trust storefronts.
Why does the report lead with the risk subset instead of the larger number?
Because the larger number does not measure what the report is about. Of the 8,217,316 sites mentioning a tracked trademark, the three most-detected trademarks alone account for 64.5%, and the leading entries are mainstream technology and software brands appearing as app-store badges, document-format notices and hardware specifications. Reporting that pool as brand abuse would overstate the problem by more than an order of magnitude. The risk subset applies the trust and transaction filters that make the signal meaningful.
Where can I get more detailed data and historical trends?
Dataprovider offers access to 400M+ domains analyzed monthly, 200+ structured data fields, and four years of historical data. Contact the Dataprovider team at dataprovider.com to get access.
How to cite this report
Dataprovider.com Research (June 2026). Counterfeit Risk Report. https://www.dataprovider.com/research/brand-protection/counterfeit-risk/