5 mn new domain registerations in Q3 take total to 220 million
26 Dec 2011
New Delhi: Nearly five million domain names were added to the Internet in the third quarter of 2011, bringing the total number of registered domain names to nearly 220 million worldwide across all domains, according to the latest Domain Name Industry Brief, published by VeriSign, Inc
VeriSign provides internet infrastructure services.
The increase of 4.9 million domain names equates to a growth rate of 2.3 per cent over the second quarter of 2011, and marks the third straight quarter with greater than 2 per cent growth.
The Internet saw the addition of 4.5 million domain names in the first quarter (a 2.2 per cent increase) and 5.2 million domain names in the second quarter (a 2.5 per cent increase).
The .com and .net 'top level domains' (TLDs) experienced aggregate growth in the third quarter, reaching a combined total of 112 million names. New .com and .net registrations totaled 7.9 million during the quarter. This is a 5.9 percent increase year-over-year in new registrations.
The year also saw the emergernce of some of the new use categories that are likely to emerge out of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers' (ICANN) plan to introduce new generic TLDs (gTLDs).
"The new gTLD process could herald the emergence of a wide range of new uses for gTLDs that could change how internet users interact with the global addressing system," VeriSign said in a ststement.
These new use categories include gTLDs that represent specific brands, hobbies, geographic locations, cultural communities, internationalized domain names, industry sectors and specific Internet-enabled services.
VeriSign publishes the Domain Name Industry Brief to provide internet users throughout the world with significant statistical and analytical research and data on the domain name industry and the internet as a whole.