April 11, 2014
The latest Domain Name Industry Brief from Verisign shows the final quarter of last year ended with 271 million active top level domain registrations.
This was an increase of 5 million names (1.9 per cent) over the third quarter of 2013. Compared to the previous year, the number of domains increased 18.5 million, or 7.3 per cent.
The two big TLDs, .COM and .NET, continued their dominance; with .COM at 112 million names and .NET at 15.2 million names.
With regard to country code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs), the base at the end of 2013 was 123.5 million names; a 3.3 percent increase quarter over quarter and a 12.1 percent increase year over year.
At the end of last year, there were 283 global ccTLD extensions - and again, Australia was ranked no. 10 in terms of base size.
The other top 10 ccTLD's were Tokelau (.TK), Germany (.DE), United Kingdom (.UK), China (.CN), Netherlands (.NL), European Union (.EU), Brazil (.BR) and Argentina (.AR).
Among the top 20 ccTLD's, China and Tokelau racked up four straight quarters where growth exceeded 4%; with 21.1 percent 7.1 percent growth respectively.
Verisign reports during Q4 last year, its average daily Domain Name System (DNS) query load was 82 billion - a 6.4 percent increase year over year.
Included in the Brief (PDF) is an interesting trivia tidbit that addresses the fear that available domain names may be running out. Verisign dispels this fear with some statistics. For example, the number of possible combinations of 13 character domain names is 230.6 quintillion. In the .COM space, only 8.6 million 13 character domains are registered, leaving over 230.5 quintillion combinations available.
Of course, many of those would not be easily readable or memorised; but even in the 4 character domain set; over 40% of possible combinations are yet to be registered. At 7 characters, it's 89.8 billion.
While registrants may not always get the domain of first choice, there's certainly still plenty to go around - pick up some tips on choosing a domain name.
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How to register a name: Enter your choice in the search tool and click 'GO'. If after the check the domain names search results show your choice is available, you will then have the option to proceed to purchase registration; which is a very quick and easy process - start a search and find your ideal website address now.
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