Published March 1, 2011
The end of last year saw over 205 million registered domain names according to the latest Domain Name Industry Brief from Verisign.
The figure represented growth of 3.5 million Top Level Domains (TLDs) over the third quarter of 2010 and a 6.3 percent jump over the previous year.
Country Code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs) represented just over 80 million names, with the most popular being .de (Germany), .uk (United Kingdom), .cn (China), .nl (Netherlands), .eu (European Union) and .ru (Russian Federation), respectively.
As usual, .com experienced significant growth, as did .net, with new registrations coming to 7.6 million - a year over year increase of 4 percent. The .org domain extension jumped from the fifth ranking among all TLDs to fourth; edging out .uk.
Domain name renewal rates for .com and .net sat at 72.7 percent, slightly down from the previous quarter (.1%), but Verisign states this was well within the realms of usual movement.
.au domain names still ranked among the top twenty ccTLDs and Australia was joined by Poland, Canada and Switzerland in exceeding 4 percent quarter over quarter growth. The .au extension also accompanied the Russian Federation and the United States as top 20 ccTLDs exceeding twenty percent year-over-year growth.
Verisign said it saw a daily Domain Name System (DNS ) query load average 61 billion, with a peak of 72 billion queries during the quarter; each of which grew 17% over quarter three in 2009.
View the full Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief (PDF)
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