There are now 271 million top-level domain names registered on the web, according to data from Verisign.The company, which manages top-level domains (TLDs) including , .net and .org revealed that a further five million new domains were added to its database in the last three months of 2013. In total, the 271 million figure represents an 18.5 million increase through 2013, as businesses and brands launch new domains all the time. The largest domain remains by some distance, with 112 million domain names.Second place, however, was less predictable, with the .tk domain owned by the tiny Pacific island of Tokelau (pictured above) boasting just under 25 million domains.The success of Tokelau has been documented before, and 10 percent of its GDP comes from letting web users have access to its domain.Registration for the domain is free, explaining its success, but this has often made it popular with scammers. Google does not rate .tk domains highly within its search index, meaning most businesses do not use the .tk domain.Third was Germany with around 18 million, fourth was the .net domain with 15.2 million domains, and fifth went to the UK’s co.uk domain, with around 12 million domains.Verisign also reported that it saw an average query load for access to the domains it manages of 82 billion per day during the fourth quarter of 2013, peaking at 100 billion on especially busy days. This was a 6.4 percent increase in the daily average compared with the final quarter of 2012.The figures for domains are likely to change dramatically in the coming months and years as new generic TLDs come online. Already this has meant firms such as Apple, Nvidia, Ericsson and Hallmark have bought the .wiki domain. v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2339250/web-reaches-271-million-domain-names-tiny-pacific-island-tokelau-comes-second-with-tk
Posted on: Fri, 18 Apr 2014 03:08:00 +0000