Internet grows to 280 million domain names in Q2, 2014

BANGALORE, INDIA: Four million domain names were added to the Internet in Q2, 2014, bringing the total number of registered domain names to 280 million worldwide across all top-level domains (TLDs), according to the latest Domain Name Industry Brief  by VeriSign, Inc.

The increase of four million domain names globally equates to a growth rate of 1.4 percent over the first quarter of 2014. Worldwide registrations have grown by 18.6 million, or 7.2 percent, year over year.

The .com and .net TLDs experienced aggregate growth in the second quarter of 2014, reaching a combined total of approximately 128.9 million domain names. This represents a 3.7 percent increase year over year. As of June 30, 2014, the base of registered names in .com equaled 113.7 million names, while .net equaled 15.2 million names.

New .com and .net registrations totaled 8.5 million during Q2, 2014.  In Q2, 2013, new .com and .net registrations totaled 8.7 million.

During Q2 2014, Verisign's average daily Domain Name System (DNS) query load was 95 billion across all TLDs operated by Verisign, with a peak of 204 billion. Compared to the previous quarter, the daily average increased 11.7 percent and the peak increased 70.4 percent. Year over year, the daily average query load increased 18.8 percent and the peak query load decreased 16.6 percent.