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The global domain name industry has reached another milestone. According to VeriSign's latest Domain Name Industry Brief covering the second quarter, the total number of registered domain names worldwide stood at 401.6 million at the end of June. Finding an available domain is becoming a little more challenging, while creative naming ideas are quietly turning into a valuable survival skill.
The industry added 9.1 million domain names during the quarter, representing growth of 2.3%. Compared with the same period last year, the global domain base expanded by 29.9 million names, or 8.1%.
Image: Verisign Blog
.COM Continues to Dominate
The largest share of new registrations once again came from the .COM and .NET namespaces, which VeriSign reports as a combined category. Together, they accounted for roughly one-third of all new domain registrations during the quarter.
The two extensions now total 179.1 million registered domain names, with year-over-year growth reaching 8.9 million. Unsurprisingly, .COM contributed the overwhelming majority of that increase. Predictions about the decline of the world's most recognizable domain extension continue to arrive much faster than the decline itself.
Country-Code Domains Keep Growing
Country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs) also maintained positive momentum. Registrations across national domain extensions reached 148.6 million, reflecting quarterly growth of 2.3 million names.
All of the ten largest ccTLD registries recorded gains during the quarter, highlighting the continued importance of local digital identities for businesses, governments, and individual website owners.
New gTLDs Continue to Expand
Legacy generic top-level domains introduced before the New gTLD program, including .BIZ and .INFO, now account for approximately 21 million registrations. Together, they added around 400,000 domain names during the quarter.
The strongest momentum, however, remains with the New gTLD segment launched after ICANN's expansion program in 2012. These extensions now total 52.9 million registered domains worldwide. The largest increases, measured in the hundreds of thousands of registrations, were recorded by .XYZ, .TOP, .SITE, .ONLINE, and .VIP.
Overall, the latest figures suggest that the domain name market continues to expand across virtually every major category. While some question whether websites still matter in the age of social media, the global domain counter quietly keeps adding another few million addresses every few months.
About VeriSign
VeriSign is a global provider of critical internet infrastructure and registry services. The company operates the .COM and .NET top-level domains and publishes its quarterly Domain Name Industry Brief, one of the most widely cited reports tracking global domain registration trends.