VeriSign DNIB

The 5.9 million names added during the 4th quarter represent a 2.7 percent growth, and this is the fourth straight quarter with over 2 percent growth. This makes 2011 a huge year with a 10 percent domain name growth.

More than 20.4 million domain names have been registered since the fourth quarter of 2010. The high rate of growth has pushed the .com and .net TLDs to 113.8 million names, with a massive 7.9 million additions during the fourth quarter of 2011.

There was no change in the order of the top 5 biggest TLDs, which remain .com, .de, .net, .uk and .org. In terms of country code top-level domains (ccTLD), of which there are almost 300, the top 5 new registrations were for .de, .uk, .tk (Tokelau), .nl and .ru.

VeriSign estimates that 88 percent of .com and .net domain names actually resolve to a website. This is important because when a domain name resolves to a website, it makes a huge positive impact on the renewal rate.

Of course, there are nuances here to consider, such as whether it is a single page or multi-page site. Single page sites are often under construction place holders or brochure-ware, parked pages, and parked pages for generating ad revenue. None of this is of much help in terms of motivating renewals on a long-term basis.

But at present, it looks very rosy with fourth quarter renewal rates went up to 73.5 percent. Domain name system query load during the fourth quarter was 64 billion, with a peak of 117 billion. That’s 8 percent higher than the daily average during the same quarter in 2010.

In short, sale of domain names is booming, renewals are booming and the number of people visiting websites is booming. Can’t ask for more…

Read the full March 2012 DNIB for Q4 2011 at verisigninc.com.