100 Million .Com Domains Now Registered
As of this time, the number of registered ".com" domain names on the internet has amounted to
more than 100 million.
It is estimated that this milestone has been passed during October or January based
on how you interpret "registered" domains. Despite this, the fact remains that the
number of ".com" domains is now in nine figures.
VeriSign, the company behind the ".com" domain, revealed yesterday in its monthly
report with domain name policy-maker ICANN that the number of registered ".com" domains
amounted to 100,540,971 as of October 31, 2011.
In comparison to September's figures, there has been a net increase of 690,243
registered domain names. For competitive purposes, the ICANN registry reports are
released 3 months after the period that they cover.
An alternative method of checking the number of registered domain names is by
checking published zone files – these provide the daily, authoritative list of which
domain uses which name server.
Based on the .com zone file, it was in late January
when the 100 million mark has been reached. The amount of registered ".com" domains
amounted to 100,052,046 according to RegistrarStats and 100,045,666 according to the
February 1 report of HosterStats.
On the other hand, inactive domains (e.g. domains without name servers/domains that
are almost expired) are also included in the count by VeriSign but are not published in
its zone file. This is probably the reason for the differences between the figures in
the zone file and the registry.
By observing the recent growth patterns (addition of
500,000 net new names each month), we can estimate that VeriSign has more than 101.5
million names included in its registry as of late, although we can't really tell until
April.
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