Number Of Domain Names Registered Approaching 200 Million

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.

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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.