Today, we released the latest issue of the Domain Name Industry Brief, which showed that the Internet grew by approximately 3.1 million domain names in the third quarter of 2015, and closed with a base of 299 million domain names across all top-level domains (TLDs). This is a 1.1 percent increase over the second quarter of 2015.
.COM AND .NET BREAKDOWN
The .com and .net TLDs experienced aggregate growth, reaching a combined total of approximately 135.2 million domain names in the domain name base in the third quarter of 2015. In the third quarter, Verisign processed 9.2 million new domain name registrations for .com and .net, as compared to 8.7 million domain names for the same period in 2014.
TLD BREAKDOWN
In the third quarter of 2015, the top 10 TLDs in order by zone size were:
CCTLD BREAKDOWN
Country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs) reached approximately 137.8 million domain names at the end of the third quarter, with a decline of about 188 thousand domain names, or a 0.1 percent decrease compared to the second quarter of 2015. As of Sept. 30, 2015, the top 10 ccTLDs by zone size were:
*.tk is a free ccTLD that provides free domain names to individuals and businesses. Revenue is generated by monetizing expired domain names. Domain names no longer in use by the registrant or expired are taken back by the registry and the residual traffic is sold to advertising networks. As such, there are no deleted .tk domain names http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20131216006048/en/Freenom-Closes-3M-Series-Funding#.UxeUGNJDv9s. The .tk zone size represented here is based on data from Q4 2014, which is the most recent data available.
NEW GTLD BREAKDOWN
At the end of the third quarter of 2015, new gTLD (ngTLD) registrations totaled approximately 7.6 million, which represents 2.5 percent of total domain name registrations. The top 10 ngTLDs represented 44.8 percent of all ngTLD domain name registrations. The following charts show ngTLD domain name registrations as a percentage of overall TLD domain name registrations, and also the top 10 ngTLDs as a percentage of all ngTLD domain name registrations.
DNS QUERY LOAD
Verisign’s average daily Domain Name System (DNS) query load during the third quarter of 2015 was approximately 120 billion across all TLDs operated by Verisign, with a peak of nearly 593 billion. Quarter over quarter, the daily average query load increased 8.0 percent and the peak increased by 225.3 percent. Year over year, the daily average increased 4.8 percent and the peak increased 86.4 percent.
For more domain stats from the third quarter of 2015, check out the infographic as well as the latest issue of Verisign’s Domain Name Industry Brief.
