Dec 5, 2008 : VeriSign Reports Q3 Domain Name Stats

📅 December 5, 2008 - Internet infrastructure services provider VeriSign (verisign.com) has released its "Domain Name Industry Brief" for the third quarter of 2008, which analyses the makeup of the 174 million domain names registered in the third quarter of 2008.


Released Thursday, Verisign's report found that the 174 million domain name registrations at the end of the quarter represents a three percent growth over the second quarter of 2008 and a 19 percent growth over the same quarter last year.

While the number of domains is increasing, it is doing so at a lower rate. The number of new domain name registrations across in the third quarter of 2008 was 11.5 million, a decline of two percent from second quarter and two percent from third quarter 2007.

In terms of total registrations, the .com top level domain name had the highest number of domains, followed by China's .cn, Germany's .de, .net, .uk and .org.

Country code TLD names totaled 68.9 million domain names, a five percent increase from last quarter and a 26 percent increase over the past 12 months.

Among the top ten largest ccTLDs, there were several changes such as Brazil's .br climbed up to the eighth position and Australia's .au debuted on the top ten for the first time, displacing Switzerland's .ch.

The report also reveals some interesting statistics around the popularity of online video and the resulting popularity of the .tv TLD (actually the ccTLD of Tuvalu, a Polynesian island nation located in the Pacific Ocean midway between Hawaii and Australia).

"In every country, people associate 'TV' with the kind of entertainment and information that users usually get from television," VeriSign naming services vice president Jill McNabb said in a statement. "Websites with a .tv domain name address provide the ideal destination for an emerging, next-generation Internet experience."

According to a poll of registrants, respondents were more likely to be viewers of online video content than creators with only 10 percent stating that they create and post videos online. Posting original content appeared to be most popular with the 18 to 29 age group, of which 15 percent identified as creators. The report also suggests that Internet users are most engaged social activities related to online video content. Forty percent of online video viewers reported that they had read others' comments.