UK tops domain desirability rankings

.uk growing faster than Germany, China

The UK's .uk namespace is the fastest-growing of the world's country-code internet domains, according to the latest statistics from VeriSign. 

The .uk zone grew 11 percent last year, the company said in its quarterly Domain Name Industry Brief. The UK beat off competition from Germany, which recorded a seven per cent increase for .de. 

Despite shrinking one percent year-on-year, China topped the charts in terms of live registrations, with Germany, the UK, Netherlands and EU filling out the top five.

Together, Germany, the UK and China comprise 44 percent of the world's 78.6 million  country-code domains. 

VeriSign's report also found that overall registrations, including non-geographical zones such as .com and .net, grew 10 percent compared to 2008 to end last year with over 192 million. 

Not all of these domains are in use, however. VeriSign found that almost a quarter of .com and .net domains have single-page web sites, while an 12 per cent have no web presence whatsoever. Next month will mark 25 years since the first-ever .com registration was made.