Over 90 Million .COM domains Registered

The TLD has passed 90 million domain name registrations mark. The figure for active .com domains as of 02 October 2010 is 90,001,869. While some of the more recently launched TLDs have had difficulty in gaining market share, the .com TLD is still the single most important global top level domain. And that is it’s attraction. Even in country level markets where the local country code TLD (ccTLD) dominates the local market, most new businesses will register their ccTLD domain and the .com version if it is available. It is this dual ccTLD/com registration pattern than has maintained the growth of .com TLD over the past few years.

The ccTLD market is approximately 76.3 million domains spread over more than 240 ccTLDs. These country code TLDs have evolved in parallel with the .com, .net and .org TLDs and the newer gTLDs such as .biz .info, .mobi and .asia. In most countries, the domain name market is focused on a ccTLD/.com axis. However as a country level market evolves, the domain registration patterns tend to shift towards the ccTLD rather than the .com TLD. The main reason for this is that the web starts to be a major advertising and sales platform for businesses and much of their commerce is local. This means that the self-identifying nature of a ccTLD domain links the business with the country