Internet tops 192 million domain name registrations

The Internet added 11 million domain name registrations in the fourth quarter of 2009, reflecting a steady pace of Internet growth, a quarter-century after the birth of .com.

These findings are featured in the latest Domain Name Industry Brief published by VeriSign Inc., a provider of Internet infrastructure services for the networked world.

The Domain Name Industry closed 2009 with a base of more than 192 million domain name registrations across all of the Top Level Domain Names (TLDs), an increase of nearly 15 million domain name registrations since the close of 2008.

In the fourth quarter of 2009, the base of domain name registrations grew by two per cent over the third quarter of 2009 and eight per cent over the fourth quarter of 2008, a VeriSign release said.

New registrations in the fourth quarter of 2009 came in at around 3.7 million domain name registrations per month to total approximately 11 million new domain name registrations across all of the TLDs in the last quarter of 2009. This reflects an eight per cent increase in new registrations from the third quarter 2009. The overall base of .com and .net domain names grew to 96.7 million domain names at the end of 2009.

This represents a two per cent increase over the third quarter and a seven per cent increase over the same quarter in 2008. New .com and .net registrations were added at an average of approximately 2.4 million per month in the last quarter of 2009 for a total of 7.3 million new registrations in the quarter.

The renewal rate for the fourth quarter of 2009 was 71 per cent which represents a slight change from the third quarter of 2009 which was approximately 70.5 per cent.