342.4 Million Top Level Domains Now Populate The Internet

A TLD is a primary construct for the Internet and includes the popular dot com domain space, which VeriSign managed under contract with the U.S. Government’s Department of Commerce. There are now well over 1000 TLDs available for organizations, individuals and government organizations to register names. DNIB 3q18Across all TLDs, VeriSign reported that there are now 342.4 million names registered, which is a gain of 3.5 percent from the third quarter of 2017.

The dot com registry remains the largest single pool of domains, with approximately 137.6 million names registered at the end of the third quarter of 2018. VeriSign also manages the dot net TLD, which had a total of approximately 14.1 million domain name registrations.

Country-code TLDs

Country-code TLD (ccTLD) domain name registrations, which include dot cn for China and dot de for Germany, continued to grow as well. Across all ccTLDs, VeriSign reported that at the end of the third quarter there were approximately 149.3 million domain name registrations for a 3.2 percent year-over-year gain.

The dot cn (.cn) ccTLD is actually the second largest TLD overall, behind dot com, with a total of 22.7 million domain names registered. Third is another ccTLD, the dot tk (tokelau) domain, which had 21.5 million domains registered. The dot tk domain has grown thanks to the fact that it is available for free to anyone that wants a domain.

Generic TLDs (ngTLD)

New generic TLDs include all manner of names, such as the dot xyz space that is used as the primary home for Google’s parent company Alphabet.

At the end of the third quarter, there were approximately 23.4 million ngTLD domain name registrations for a 10.9 percent year-over-year gain.

Total new gTLD (ngTLD) domain name registrations were approximately 23.4 million at the end of the third quarter of 2018, an increase of approximately 2.3 million domain name registrations, or 10.9 percent, year over year.

Somewhat ironically, the top ngTLD domain by registrations is the dot top domain, with 14.4 percent of all ngTLD registrations. Coming in second is the dot loan ngTLD at 9.5 percent, followed by dot xyz at 8.0 percent.― Enterprise Networking Planet