Domain name registrations grew by one million in the first quarter of 2010 according to the latest Domain Name Industry Brief published by VeriSign, despite .CN registrations declining by over 4.5 million, showing that the seemingly never-ending growth in domain name registrations continues.The report found that at the end of the first quarter of 2010 there was a base of more than 193 million domain names registered across all Top Level Domain Names (TLDs), an increase of 11 million domain name registrations, or 6 percent, compared to the first quarter of 2009. Compared to the fourth quarter of 2009, domain name registrations grew 0.6 percent.The overall base of .COM and .NET domain names grew to 99.3 million domain names in the first quarter of 2010. This represents a 2.7 percent increase over the fourth quarter and a 7 percent increase over the same quarter in 2009. New .COM and .NET registrations were added at an average of approximately 2.7 million per month in the first quarter of 2010 for a total of 8.1 million new registrations in the quarter. The renewal rate for the first quarter of 2010 was 72 percent, an increase from the fourth quarter of 2009, which was 71.2 percent. Quarterly renewal rates may deviate a few percentage points in either direction each quarter based upon the composition of the expiring base and the contribution of specific registrars.The first quarter of 2010 ended with 76.3 million ccTLD domain name registrations, a decrease of 2.3 million domain name registrations (or 2.9 percent) compared to the fourth quarter of 2009, but an increase of nearly 2.4 million (or 3.2 percent) from a year ago. This decrease was heavily impacted by a decrease in .CN (China) registrations from 13,459,133 to 8,844,196, a total decrease of 4,614,937 registrations.The large drop in .CN registrations is probably due to changes in registration requirements and promotions that were running one year ago with many registrants not re-registering their domain names due to increased costs. Quarter over quarter, .CN registrations fell 34.3 percent, or 36 percent year over year.Among the largest ccTLDs, there was notable zone growth quarter over quarter in the United States (.US) with 15.9 percent, Poland (.PL), with 7.5 percent, and .RU with 7.4 percent growth. Switzerland (.CH) saw no change, while Spain (.ES) saw a slight decline of 0.2 percent.There are more than 240 ccTLD extensions globally, with the top 10 ccTLDs comprising 62 percent of the total number of registrations.While VeriSign publish a comprehensive report on domain registrations, they only publish an official figure in their Domain Name Industry Brief for combined .COM and .NET domain registrations. But according to a graph in the report there are slightly fewer than 80 million .COM registrations and about 20 million .NET registrations.The TLD with the most registrations continues to be .COM, however there have been some changes in rankings following. The German ccTLD (.DE) was the second largest TLD at the end of quarter one followed by .NET and then .CN.Following were .UK (United Kingdom), .ORG, .INFO, .NL (Netherlands), .EU (European Union) and .RU (Russia).VeriSign’s average daily Domain Name System (DNS) query load during first quarter 2010 was 54 billion per day with peaks as high as 63.2 billion per day. Compared to fourth quarter 2009, the daily query average and the daily peak queries both saw an increase of 4 percent. Taken annually, the daily average increased 41 percent and the peak daily queries grew 43 percent.To read more on the latest VeriSign Domain Name Industry Brief, see www.verisign.com/domain-name-services/domain-information-center/industry-brief/. The report will soon be available in Spanish and Portuguese while earlier reports are available in all three languages.
VeriSign Report Finds Domain Registrations Growing Strongly… Again
Domain name registrations grew by one million in the first quarter of 2010 according to the latest Domain Name Industry Brief published by VeriSign, despite .CN registrations declining by over 4.5 million, showing that the seemingly never-ending growth in domain name registrations continues.