Domain Name Industry Brief

As a leader in global domain names and Internet security, Verisign provides this briefing to review the state of the domain name industry and highlight important trends in domain name registration.

Domain Name Industry Brief

The second quarter of 2016 closed with approximately 334.6 million domain name registrations across all top-level domains (TLDs), an increase of approximately 7.9 million domain name registrations, or 2.4 percent over the first quarter of 2016. Domain name registrations have grown by 38.2 million, or 12.9 percent, year over year. ¹

¹ The generic top-level domain (gTLD) and ccTLD data cited in this report are estimates as of the time this report was developed, and is subject to change as more complete data is received. Total includes ccTLD Internationalized Domain Names.
Top 10 Largest TLDs by Number of Reported Domain Names

Source: Zooknic, Q2 2016; Verisign, Q2 2016; Centralized Zone Data Service, Q2 2016
Growth of .com & .net

The .com and .net TLDs experienced aggregate growth, reaching a combined total of approximately 143.2 million domain name registrations in the domain name base² in the second quarter of 2016.

² The domain name base is the active zone plus the number of domain names that are registered but not configured for use in the respective Top-Level Domain zone file plus the number of domain names that are in a client or server hold status.
Largest ccTLDs by Number of Reported Domain Names

Total ccTLD domain name registrations were approximately 149.9 million in the first quarter of 2016, with an increase of 1.4 million domain name registrations.

Source: Zooknic, Q2 2016
Top 10 Trending Keywords in .com and .net

This chart represents the top 10 trending keywords registered in English in .com and .net domain name registrations for the second quarter of 2016.
DNS Query Load

During the second quarter of 2016, Verisign’s average daily Domain Name System (DNS) query load was approximately 130 billion queries per day across all TLDs operated by Verisign, with a peak of nearly 179 billion queries.