Verisign's Domain Name Industry Brief
VeriSign, the global registry operator for .com, .net and other extensions, has released its 3rd quarter Domain Name Industry Brief (DNIB). In this brief, VeriSign reviews the state of the domain industry using statistical and analytical methods. As always, HEXONET looks forward to this report since it is packed with interesting data, insights, key performance metrics, and growth opportunities. HEXONET would like to provide a synopsis of the this important report:
1) Major Threshold is Broken!
The total number of domains registered worldwide has surpassed the 200 million barrier. There are now more than 201.8 million domain names registered across all Top Level Domains (TLDs), an increase of 3.8 million domain names or 2 percent just over this past second quarter. Registrations have grown by 13.3 million, or 7% over the past year.
2) ccTLDs, a Big Piece of the Pie:
ccTLDs (country-code Top Level Domains) now account for approximately 40% of all global domains. There are now 79.2 million ccTLDs. This segment continues to grow year-over-year. There are more than 240 ccTLD extensions globally, with the top ten ccTLDs compromising 60 percent of all ccTLD registrations. And since HEXONET offers one of the widest selection of ccTLDs in the industry, our resellers are well positioned to profit from the explosion of ccTLDs. In fact, our resellers have successfully used ccTLDs to not only "anchor-in" existing clients, but to also attract new ones.
The Russian Federation, Brazil and Australia have recently join Poland and France as top 20 ccTLDs exceeding 20 per cent year-over-year growth.
3) How Many Zeros Make up a Quadrillion??
A very interesting note in this report was VeriSign's quarterly metric on the average Domain Name System (DNS) query load. This past quarter the average DNS query load was just over 66 billion queries per day or 23 percent more than the same quater in 2009. The steady and unabating growth in DNS queries has prompted VeriSign, through their Project Apollo, to look at expanding DNS query capacity from todays 4 trillion query cap to an amazing 4 quadrillion queries per day by 2020. That is 24 zeros!!
4) The "Decade of the International Internet"
The report also takes a look at how the Internet has truly gone globally over the last decade. Over the past ten years, the Internet has expanded by over 500 percent with most of the growth in the developing countries. For instance, Africa had less than five million Internet users a decade ago, but has more than 100 million users today. And Asia, which had approximately the same number of users as Europe or North America back then, today has more than both continents combined! According to VeriSign, "What these trends tell us is that over the past decade the Internet has internationalized its audience and provided a platform for services beyond those targeted for speakers of Latin-based languages. Today, the English-speaking world makes up less than 40 percent of Internet users."
The importance and influence of IDNs (Internationalized Domain Names) was noted as a strong factor in the growth of the Internet globally. In fact, over the past year ICANN has approved several new ccTLD IDNs including IDNs for the countries of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, China and Russia. In 2011, even more ccTLDs IDNs are expected to made public. HEXONET resellers and customers continue to have an edge as we are typically one of the first, if not the first, registrars to offer these newly minted IDNs.