The number of domain names strongly increased

Even though we are going through recession, people still trust in e-commerce. This is what is revealed by the figures provided by Verisign: in the 1st quarter of 2009, the number of domain names increased by 12 % compared to the year before.

Currently, there are a total of 183 million domain names, among which 74.1 million ccTLDs (country code top-level domains, such as .be, .de, .nl, etc.). What is surprising is that the number of ccTLDs increased faster than the other domain names (+18 %). Another noteworthy fact: the Netherlands are fourth in the top 10 of the ccTLDs that count the largest number of registered domains, after China, Germany and the UK, but after Russia, Argentina, Italy and Brazil – countries that do definitely count more inhabitants.

As far as the .com domains are concerned: after a very slow 2008, the number of .com and .net domain registrations increased again by 17% in the first quarter of 2009, during which 7.3 million new registrations were recorded.