The fourth quarter of 2010 closed with a base of more than 205.3 million domain name registrations across all Top Level Domains (TLDs), an increase of 3.5 million domain names, or 1.7 percent over the third quarter. Registrations have grown by 12.1 million, or 6.3 percent over the past year.
The base of Country Code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs) was 80.1 million domain names, a 1.1 percent increase quarter over quarter, and a 0.3 percent increase year over year. The .com and .net TLDs experienced strong aggregate growth in the fourth quarter, reaching a combined total of approximately 105.2 million names. New .com and .net registrations totaled 7.6 million during the quarter. This is a 1.6 percent increase in new registrations from the third quarter. Year over year, new registrations increased 4 percent.
The order of the top TLDs in terms of zone size changed only slightly compared to the third quarter, as .org moved from fifth to fourth largest TLD, dropping .uk (United Kingdom) from fourth to fifth. The largest TLDs in terms of base size were, in order, .com, .de (Germany), .net, .org, .uk, .info, .cn (China), .nl (Netherlands), .eu (European Union) and .ru (Russian Federation).
Source: The Domain Name Industry Brief / FEBRUARY 2011 (Verisign, pdf)