Internet grows to 299mn domain names in 3Q, 2015

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Approximately 3.1 million domain names were added to the Internet in the third quarter of 2015. This brings the total number of registered domain names to approximately 299 million worldwide across all top-level domains (TLDs) as of Sept. 30, 2015, according to the latest Domain Name Industry Brief by VeriSign.

The increase of approximately 3.1 million domain names globally equates to a growth rate of 1.1 percent over the second quarter of 2015. Worldwide registrations have grown by 14.8 million, or 5.2 percent, year over year.

The .com and .net TLDs experienced aggregate growth in the third quarter of 2015, reaching a combined total of approximately 135.2 million .com and .net domain names in the domain name base. This represents a 3.4 percent increase year over year. As of Sept. 30, 2015, the domain name base of .com equaled 120.1 million names, while .net equaled 15.1 million names.

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.

During the third quarter of 2015, Verisign’s average daily Domain Name System (DNS) query load was approximately 120 billion queries per day across all TLDs operated by Verisign, with a peak of nearly 593 billion. Compared to the previous quarter, the daily average query load increased 8.0 percent and the peak increased by 225.3 percent. Year over year, the daily average query load increased by 4.8 percent, and the peak increased by 86.4 percent.