[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif]But for how long? That's the question some people will no doubt ask themselves while reading Verisign's latest domain stats. The .COM registry's numbers cover Q3 2008, so miss out on the full impact of the credit crunch. They show no real signs of slowing domain growth.
Even though there was a small decline in the rate of overall domain registration growth, this is easily explained by the historical trend for a weaker third quarter when compared to registration volumes for the first half of any given year.
Overall, across all TLDs, there were 174 million registered domains at the end of September 2008. That's a 19% increase year over year. The world's TLDs added a total of 11.5 million names in Q3 2008, a decline of 2% in growth rate from Q2 2008 and also 2% less than the Q3 2007 growth rate.
There were 68.9 million names registered across the ccTLDs at the end of Q3 2008 (89.4 million for .COM and .NET combined). That's 5% growth over Q2 2008 and 26% over Q3 2007. China's .CN stole a march on all other ccTLDs by moving into top spot ahead of Germany's .DE. The next three are .UK, .NL and .EU, but the top three ccTLDs all experienced flat growth rates in Q3 2008.
Check out www.Domaines.Info's stats for comprehensive registration numbers including overall top ten, gTLD top five, ccTLD top five, regional top fives (Europe, Asia, America and a top three for Oceania) and an overall top 40. Each chart shows current month registration numbers and compares them with the previous quarter's registration numbers. Growth rates are given and where possible, local market penetration is shown as a "number of domains per 100 people".[/FONT]
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