Internet closes in on 200 million domain names

The internet will almost certainly break through the 200 million domain names milestone before the end of the year, judging from VeriSign’s latest Domain Name Industry Brief.

There were about 196.3 million registered domains at the end of June, according to the report, up by 3 million on the first quarter and 12.3 million on the second quarter 2009. That’s 2% and 7% growth, respectively.

The drag factor on the overall market caused by the mass expiry of millions of Chinese .cn domains seems to have levelled off, making the growth a little more encouraging than in the first quarter.

Regardless, VeriSign said that 76.3 million domains were registered in the ccTLDs, basically flat when compared to the March numbers and a 2.5% increase year-on-year.

The ccTLDs may see a growth spurt in the third-quarter DNIB, due to the influence of .co’s launch, assuming another .cn situation does not arise in another TLD.

VeriSign doesn’t say as much, but if the ccTLDs only grew by a net 63,000 names, that means the bulk of the 3 million new domains were in the gTLDs, but it doesn’t break the number down by gTLD.

It doesn’t even say precisely how many .com/.net domains it manages, or what its growth rates were, just that the two TLDs’ combined total now exceeds 100 million.

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Tagged: .cn, domain name industry brief, verisign