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The Internet is closing in on another milestone: 200 million domain names

June 11th, 2010 General

Looks like we’re headed for a huge milestone on the Internet: 200 million registered field names. By the end of Q1 this year there were a total of 193 million field names when together with all top-level domains. That was two months ago.

When we say all top-level domains, we mean both gTLDs and ccTLDs. gTLDs are those generic top-level domains like .com, .net and .org. ccTLDs are public code top-level domains such as .de, .cn and .uk.

We may by now have passed 200 million field names, really. Two months ago, there were less than 117 million gTLDs. Now there are nearly 121 million. That’s an increase of more than 4 million field names, and that without counting the more than 240 ccTLDs that exist out there. So, if you count all top-level domains together, 200 million either is very, very close, or a number we’ve recently passed.

From 100 to 200 million

To place the 200 million number in perspective, it might be worth to point out when we passed 100 million field names. The Internet did this back in Q2 2006, so it’s not too long ago.

Here is what the field name growth has looked like since then:

The number of domain names in the world
Above: The weak increase in Q1 2010 is mainly because China changed the policy for .cn registrations, which made millions of .cn field names drop off.

And for those of you who wonder how many of today’s field names are .coms: There are nearly 88 million .com field names. That’s more than six times as many field names as the second-largest, .de (Germany’s ccTLD), which has 13.7 million field names. Com is still the undisputed king.

Data sources: Verisign Field Name Industry Concise, RegistrarStats, DENIC.

Further reading: Interested in field names? Check out the field name infographic we recently place together.