Almost five million Internet domain names were registered in the first three months of the year, pushing the world total to just shy of 63 million, or one domain per 100 people alive today, according to reports released June 8 by VeriSign, Inc.
The recent availability of Arabic, Chinese, and Russian characters within domain names had a hand in the quarterly spike, VeriSign said, adding that the present domain name base is now being used more actively than before. Overall, the near-63 million domains in registration now is greater than any time in the history of the Internet, including the first dot-com boom, the company said.
And the worldwide domain registration growth is likely to continue, according to VeriSign executive vice president for naming and directory services Rusty Lewis.
"Though North America has the highest number of Internet users as a percentage of its population – some 55 percent – increasing Internet traffic is a reflection of a fast-growing group of Internet users around the world," Lewis said, announcing the current findings.
He said 223 million in Asia and 173 million in Europe are now online regularly, compared to about 175 million in North America. But they represent only about six percent of Asia's total population and 22 percent of Europe's, he added.
According to VeriSign's "Domain Name Industry Brief," issued this month, the near-63 million registered domains after March 2004 dwarfs the almost 52 million registered as of the end of calendar 2002, the almost 49 million as of the end of 2001, and the 40 million at the end of 2000. The growth between the end of 2002 and March 2004 was the highest spike since that from December 2000 to December 2001.
The largest percentage of domains continues to be .com (45 percent), with country code top level domains (ccTLD) second (40 percent), and .net and alternate generic top-level domains (gTLDs) like .org, .biz, and .info tied for third (8 percent each).
"When looking at the domain name industry," the report said, ".com still leads in appeal to registrants. While .net is number four in terms of number of domains registered, it is integral to the smooth operation of the Internet. It is the largest top level domain in terms of number of hosts… at 44 percent."
Most organizations using .net tend to be telecommunications and network providers critical to the Net's operations, VeriSign said.
The U.S. has the most .net hosts (60 percent), followed by Japan (21 percent), Taiwan (4 percent), and Canada, Germany, and Great Britain (3 percent each), with others totaling the remaining 6 percent.
VeriSign's companion "Domain Name Registrant Profile" says English-speaking Netizens continue to dominate the world's Internet presence at 35.8 percent, followed by those speaking Spanish (9 percent) and German (7.3 percent).
Following them, in descending order, are those whose primary language is Korean (4.1 percent), French (3.8 percent), Portugese (3.5 percent), Italian (3.3 percent), Russian (2.5 percent), and Dutch (1.8 percent), with other languages totaling 5.2 percent. But VeriSign also says that, as more Asian Pacific people join the Internet community, Asiatic languages may overtake English as the number one language for content and users alike.
