The total number of registered domain names grew by almost six million to more than 225 million worldwide across all domains, according to the latest Domain Name Industry Brief, published by VeriSign.The increase of 5.9 million domain names equates to a growth rate of 2.7 per cent over the third quarter of 2011, and marks the fourth straight quarter with greater than 2 per cent growth. Registrations have grown by more than 20.4 million, or 10 per cent, since the fourth quarter of 2010.The .COM and .NET Top Level Domains (TLDs) experienced aggregate growth in the fourth quarter, reaching a combined total of 113.8 million names. This represents approximately a 2 per cent increase in the base over the third quarter of 2011 and an 8 per cent increase over the same quarter in 2010. Verisign does not break down .COM and .NET registrations individually, but using statistics provided by Registrar Stats, just under 100 million of these would be for .COM domains and just over 14 million for .NET.New .COM and .NET registrations totalled 7.9 million during the quarter. This is a 4 per cent increase year-over-year in new registrations. The .COM/.NET renewal rate for the fourth quarter was 73.5 per cent, up from 73.3 per cent for the third quarter.For ccTLDs, total registrations were approximately 90.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2011 with the addition of 3.7 million domain names, or a 4.2 per cent increase compared to the third quarter. This is an increase of approximately 10.6 million domain names, or 13.2 per cent from a year ago.Among the 20 largest ccTLDs, Poland, Sweden, Tokelau and the Russian Federation each exceeded four per cent quarter over quarter growth. Last quarter, four of the top 20 exceeded the same threshold.There are more than 290 ccTLD extensions globally (including Internationalized Domain Names), with the top ten ccTLDs comprising 60 per cent of all registrations.The ten largest ccTLDs at the end of 2011 were:
- .DE (Germany)
- .UK (United Kingdom)
- .TK (Tokelau)
- .NL (Netherlands)
- .RU (Russian Federation)
- .EU (European Union)
- .CN (China)
- .BR (Brazil)
- .AR (Argentina)
- .IT (Italy).
The report also looked at renewal rates. Whether a domain name resolves to a website is a key factor in the renewal rates since domain names that resolve to websites are more likely to be renewed. Verisign estimates that 88 per cent of .COM and .NET domain names resolve to a website, meaning that an end-user visiting that domain name would find a website. These websites can be further described as those having multiple pages or as one-page websites. One-page websites include under construction, brochure-ware and parked pages in addition to online advertising revenue generating parked pages.Verisign’s average daily Domain Name System (DNS) query load during the quarter was 64 billion, with a peak of 117 billion. Compared to the previous quarter, the daily average increased 8 per cent and the peak grew 51 per cent.The latest Verisgn Domain Name Industry Brief is available to download from:
www.verisigninc.com/en_US/why-verisign/research-trends/domain-name-industry-brief/index.xhtml