Domain Registrations Reach All-Time High Of 83.9 Million

The Internet continues to expand, with domain registrations reaching an all time high of 83.9 million, according to VeriSign's Domain Name Industry Brief for the second quarter of 2005.

The domain name space experienced eight percent growth in the second quarter of this year, and an impressive 28% increase since the second quarter of 2004. According to VeriSign, price promotions and product bundling encouraged the registration of 8.1 million new domain names in the second quarter of 2005, a 16% increase in new domain name registrations over the first quarter and 63% rise over the previous year.

The .com and .net domains remain as popular as ever, growing seven percent in the last quarter to reach 44.2 million names, a 30% increase over the same quarter in 2004. New .com and .net registrations were up 4.2 million, 49% over the same period last year, and renewal rates reached an all-time high of 75%.

VeriSign says that it processed an average of 14.9 billion net queries every day for .com and .net during the last quarter, indicating a steady increase in overall traffic. "For several years now, VeriSign has reported that the number of queries it manages in operating .com and .net infrastructure is consistently increasing," VeriSign senior vice president of Naming and Directory Services Mark McLaughlin said in a statement. "Today, we manage 14.9 billion queries per day, on average, in running .com and .net. That number is doubling about every 18 months, which tells us that email and Web traffic is growing steadily."