Domain name registrations hit record

September 2004

Domain name registration hit an all-time high of 64.5 million at the end of the second quarter, VeriSign said Tuesday.

The figure represents a 7 percent increase over the end of 2003, the Internet domain name registry said. For the quarter, the number of registrations was 4.6 million, up 2.5 percent from the first quarter. VeriSign said the growth in registrations last reached this level in the late 1990s, during the height of the dot-com bubble.

Under a contract with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), VeriSign operates the master database of all .com and .net domains. VeriSign collects a few dollars a year for each domain name from the approximately 200 ICANN-accredited registrars that sell domain names to the public.

Although .com domains continued to lead the list, country code top-level domains emerged as the fastest-growing group and now account for 39 percent of all domain registrations. The most popular are .de for Germany and .uk for the United Kingdom.