Domain name and internet security giant Verisign have revealed in their annual report that the total number of domain name registrations have grown to 332.4 million in Q4 of 2017. They further added that the key drivers for this growth have been the rise in ccTLD registrations along with changing social media trends.
According to Verisign’s report, the growth of .COM and .NET domains can be attributed to popular social media and e-commerce sites like Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Etsy. The report also states that the percentage rise has been considerably higher than that in 2016.
With respect to the total number of domain name registrations, Verisign stated in the report that the rise is approximately 0.9% or 3.1 million in number, year-on-year. They further added that .COM and .NET collectively contribute 146.4 million registrations of domain names with a 2.9% increase year-on-year. The report also stated that the new .COM and .NET domain name registrations totaled 9.0 million during the fourth quarter of 2017, compared to 8.8 million for the fourth quarter in 2016.
On the other hand, ccTLD domain names which stand at 146.1 million have grown by 1% or 1.4 million in number year-on-year, as per Verisign’s report. It further stated that China’s .CN, New Zealand territory Tokelau’s .TK and Germany’s .DE ccTLDs have registered major growth in domain names as a result of newer reforms and easy registration processes.
Finally, with respect to new gTLDs, Verisign’s report stated that the number of domain name registrations stands at 20.6 million, dropping by 5 million names or 19.5% as compared to the previous year. Industry analysts speculate that this drop could be attributed to the cancellation of new gTLDs done by ICANN in recent times.