VeriSign today said that about four million domain names were added to the Internet in the third quarter of 2014, bringing the total number of registered domain names to 284 million worldwide across all top-level domains (TLDs). The number was provided by the latest Domain Name Industry Brief.
The increase of four million domain names globally equates to a growth rate of 1.6% over the second quarter of 2014. Worldwide registrations have grown by 18.1 million, or 6.8%, year on year.
The .com and .net TLDs experienced aggregate growth in the third quarter of 2014, reaching a combined total of 130 million domain names in the adjusted zone for .com and .net. This represents a 3.3% increase year on year. As of September 30, 2014, the base of registered names in .com equaled 114.9 million names, while .net equaled 15.1 million names.
New .com and .net registrations totaled 8.7 million during the third quarter of 2014. In the third quarter of 2013, new .com and .net registrations totaled 8.3 million.
During the third quarter of 2014, Verisign’s average daily Domain Name System (DNS) query load was 114 billion across all TLDs operated by Verisign, with a peak of 318 billion, the highest average and peak query loads in a single quarter to date. Compared to the previous quarter, the daily average increased 20.1% and the peak increased 55.6%. Year over year, the daily average query load increased 40% and the peak query load increased 202.1%.
Although it’s still unclear how much impact current cryptocurrency systems will ultimately have on the “real-world” of finance, what is clear already is that Internet-based applications enabled by ubiquitous networking and computing are a powerful force for financial innovation.