December 24, 2012
Verisign's State Of The Domain report shows nearly a quarter of a billion top-level domain names are now registered.
According to the report, Q3 ended with a base of more than 246 million domain name registrations across all Top- Level Domains (TLDs), an increase of 5.7 million names, or 2.4 percent growth over the second quarter of this year - and 12% growth compared to the same time last year.
Based on a current global population estimate of 7,060,543,570; the number of TLD names currently registered works out to be one name for every 28 people on the planet.
.COM and .NET names combined are now nudging 120 million (approximately) 119.9 million and country code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs) now number nearly 105 million (104.9 million).
.COM and .NET growth weighed in with 1 percent growth over the second quarter of 2012 and a 7.1 percent increase over the third quarter of 2011.
ccTLD's have performed particularly strongly, with a 4.6 percent increase quarter over quarter and a 20.7 percent increase compared to the same period last year.
The Australian domain name extension, .AU, was again in the top ten ccTLD registries, ranking number 9. The top 3 in order of size were .DE (Germany), .TK (Tokelau) and .UK (United Kingdom).
Among the 20 largest ccTLDs; China, Tokelau and Colombia exceeded 4 percent overall quarter-over-quarter growth.
Verisign says that as of the end of September, there were 280 ccTLD extensions globally, with the top 10 ccTLDs accounting for 62 percent of all related registrations.
The company states its average daily Domain Name System (DNS) query load during the third quarter (67 billion) dropped 1.3 percent compared to the previous quarter; but its peak of 102 billion queries increased 14.1 percent. Compared to the same period last year, Verisign's daily average DNS query load increased 12.8 percent and the peak increased 31.8 percent.
Verisign's December 2012 Domain Name Industry Brief can be viewed in full here (pdf).
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