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Domain name universe tops 400 million
The number of registered domain names topped 400 million for the first time, according to the estimates in Verisign’s latest Domain Name Industry Brief quarterly report.
There were 401.6 million domains across all TLDs at the end of June, up 9.1 million or 2.3% compared to the first quarter and 29.9 million, or 8.1%, compared to a year earlier, the company reported.
About a third of the net new names were registered in .com and .net (let’s be frank, mostly .com), leaving Verisign’s flagships with a combined total of 179.1 million names. Annually, .com/.net was up 8.9 million names.
ccTLD domains were up 2.3 million at 148.6 million, while legacy, pre-2012 gTLDs, such as .biz and .info, were up by a total of 400,000 names to 21 million.
Post-2012 gTLDs slightly outperformed .com, with 3.3 new names to end Q2 at 52.9 million. The larger of them, including .xyz, .top, .site, .online and .vip, all experienced six-figure growth, with .vip pushing .site out of the top 10.
The top 10 largest ccTLDs all experienced growth and there was no change in their rankings.
That said, I don’t fully understand the source of some of Verisign’s numbers. For example, for not the first time the DNIB reports Russia’s .ru at 6.9 million domains, which is about 800,000 more than the .ru registry self-reports.
That’s the difference between .ru being the clear number-four ccTLD and it being pretty much tied with the Netherlands’ .nl. Both ccTLDs self-report 6.1 million names, rounded, on their own web sites.
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