192 million domain names registered in 2009

The Internet domain name industry closed the year 2009 with more than 192 million registrations across all top level domain names, a rise of 15 million since the close of 2008, Internet infrastructure services provider VeriSign Inc said in a release on Tuesday.

In the fourth quarter of 2009, the industry added 11 million domain name registrations, reflecting a steady pace of growth, the release adds. In the fourth quarter, domain name registrations grew 2 per cent over the third quarter and 8 per cent over the year ago period, the release says.

The overall base of ‘.com’ and ‘.net’ domain names grew to 96.7 million at the end of 2009.

New ‘.com’ and ‘.net’ registrations were added at an average of about 2.4 million a month to a total of 7.3 million in the last quarter of 2009, the release adds.