The number of registered domain names in the world grew by 2.7 million in the third quarter, despite market-leading .com shrinking, according to Verisign’s latest Domain Name Industry Brief.
There were 359.3 million domains across all TLDs at the end of September, according to the DNIB. up from 356.6 million at the end of June.
Over the same period, .com shrunk by half a million names as Verisign faces challenges from exposure to erratic demand from China.
New gTLD volumes were up by 2.1 million names to end the quarter at 30.2 million. Judging by zone files, at least half of these new names seem to be cheap, low-quality regs in the likes of .top and .cfd.
Total ccTLD names were 138.1 million at the end of the quarter, up by a million. All of the top 10 ccTLDs grew or were flat, except .uk, which lost about a hundred thousand names.
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