Verisign has revealed that around 11 million domain names were registered during the last quarter of 2009 pushing the total number of domain name registrations to 192 million, 25 years after dotcom domain names were released.

The details were published as part of the Domain Name Industry Brief that the internet infrastructure service provider publishes every quarter. Globally, dotcom and dotnet domain names are till the most popular accounting for more than half of the total number of domain names registered worldwide.

The renewal rate of domain names reached 71 percent in the fourth quarter, a timid increase of half a percent. This means that nearly 30 percent of all domain names registered are allowed to expire.

The most popular Top level domains after dotcom are China, Germany and UK respectively. Dotuk domains have enjoyed a surprising surge last year with their rate of growth hitting 11 percent compared to the previous year.

Amongst other data released by Verisign is the fact that 37 percent of domains (that's almost two out of every five domain names) either point to a single page (the homepage) or point to nothing at all.

Furthermore, the DNS (Domain Name System) structure apparently receives roughly 52 million requests every day, that's roughly 2.1 million requests every hour and is more than twice the volume in 2008.

Our Comments

On average, around 120,000 domain names are still registered every day, which translates into around 5000 every hour of the day. Domain name registration is still, big, very big money. Not surprisingly though, dotbiz and dotinfo domain names haven't picked up.

Related Links

Domain Name Registration Now 192 Million Worldwide

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VeriSign: Domain names closing in on 200 million

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Internet tops 192 million domain name registrations

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UK tops domain desirability rankings

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Verisign reports on domain names

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