Nearly six million domain names were added to the Internet in the fourth quarter of 2011, bringing the total number of registered domain names to more than 225 million worldwide across all domains, according to the latest Domain Name Industry Brief, published by VeriSign.
The increase of 5.9 million domain names equates to a growth rate of 2.7% over the third quarter of 2011, and marks the fourth straight quarter with greater than 2% growth. Registrations have grown by more than 20.4 million, or 10%, since the fourth quarter of 2010.
The .com and .net Top Level Domains (TLDs) experienced aggregate growth in the fourth quarter, reaching a combined total of 113.8 million names. This represents approximately a 2% increase in the base over the third quarter of 2011 and an 8% increase over the same quarter in 2010. New .com and .net registrations totaled 7.9 million during the quarter. This is a 4% increase year-over-year in new registrations. The .com/.net renewal rate for the fourth quarter was 73.5 percent, up from 73.3% for the third quarter.
Verisign's average daily Domain Name System (DNS) query load during the quarter was 64 billion, with a peak of 117 billion. Compared to the previous quarter, the daily average increased 8% and the peak grew 51%.
