Domain Name Statistics: How Many Domains Are There?

Are you looking for the latest domain name statistics? You’re in the right place.

In simple terms, domain names are the network addresses you type into your browser URL bar when visiting a website.

It’s easy to overlook their importance—most internet users use domain names every day without even thinking about it—but without them, the internet wouldn’t be as we know it today.

In this post, we’ll share some eye-opening statistics that tell us more about the domain names that make up the World Wide Web. And we’ll answer all the important questions, like:

• How many domain names are there?
• What are the most popular domain name extensions?
• Which company registers the most domains?
• How many .com domains are there?
• How many domains are registered each month?
• And more!

Ready? Let’s get started.

How many domains are there?

There are around 628.5 million registered domains at the time of writing. 

Of these, 43% feature generic TLDs (top-level domains), making this the largest sub-type of domain names. 

Over 37% are .com domains, making this the most common domain extension. 

And 21.5% are registered in the US, making this the country with the most registered domains.

Domain registrations over time

The number of registered domain names has been growing year over year. But registrations spiked throughout 2020, 2021, and 2022:

• 438.4 million domains were registered as of 31 Dec 2021 (+117% YOY)
• 201.6 million domains were registered as of 31 Dec 2020 (+21% YOY)
• 165.96 million domains were registered as of 31 Dec 2019 

Here’s a graph that shows the total number of registered domains over time:

As you can see, there’s a steep upward curve, which began in the early 2000s but shot up dramatically in 2021, likely due to the impact of the global coronavirus pandemic.

The pandemic saw national lockdowns all across the world. Offices shut and consumers spent more time online. As a result, many new websites were launched to capitalize on the increase in internet traffic.

Key statistics:

• September 2021 was the month in which the most new domain registrations ever recorded took place
• The most domain registrations ever happened on 21 September 2021, when there were 14.5 million new registrations in a single day. 

Registered domains by TLD type

TLD (top-level domain) refers to the last part of a domain name (the bit that comes after the final dot). For example, in https://www.colorlib.com, .com is the TLD

We can subcategorize TLDs into three types: Generic TLDs (gTLD), Country TLDs (ccTLD), and New gTLDs. 

Here’s a table showing a detailed breakdown of registered domains by TLD

TLD type	Registered domains	Number of different extensions
Generic TLDs	270.4 million	8
Country TLDs	250.2 million	340
New gTLDs	107.9 million	1,254

As you can see, more registered domains use Generic TLDs than any other type of top-level domain (233.5 million), making this the most common domain name TLD. There are only 8 gTLDs, which are widely considered to be the ‘core’ domain extensions: .com, .net, .org, .gov, .int, .edu, .arpa, and .mil.

.com is the most common generic TLD with over 233.5m registered domains, and .mil is the least common with just 359 registered domains

Country TLDs (or ccTLD) are the second-most common TLD type with 250.2 million registrations. These are top-level domains that refer to countries, states, and territories and ccTLDs consist of two letters representing the country code (e.g. .us, .tk, etc.).

There are 340 country TLDs. .tk is most common with 26.9m registered domains. And the oddly-named .xn--4dbrk0ce is least common extension with 0 registered domains.

New gTLDs are new extensions that ICANN released as the internet grew and demand for domain names increased. There are 1,254 new TLDs which cover fields like technology, science, etc. 

These are the least most common type with only 107.9m registrations. .xyz is most common new TLD with 11.7m domain names, while .flsmidth and .doosan are least common with 0 registered domains

Sources: Domain Name Stat

How many .com domains are there?

There are over 233.6 million .com domain names, which is 37.16% of all registered domains. This makes it by far the most common domain name extension. 

Interestingly, the second most common domain name extension is .tk—the country code of Tokelau, a small territory of New Zealand in the South Pacific.

This might be surprising given that the population of Tokelau is only 1,400. But the reason for the extensions popularity is that it’s the only extension that could be registered for free. It’s also very commonly used by phishing scammers, which have harmed its reputation.

Top 10 most common domain name extensions

TLD extension	Number of registered domains	% share
.com	233.6 million	37.16%
.tk	26.9 million	4.29%
.cn	26.2 million	4.16%
.de	23.4 million	3.72%
.net	20.6 million	3.27%
.uk	20.4 million	3.25%
.org	16.2 million	2.58%
.xyz	11.7 million	1.87%
.ru	11 million	1.75%
.top	9.3 million	1.48%

Other extensions accounted for 37.95% of the domain registration share.

Which country has the most registered domains?

There are over 135.2 million registered domains in the USA, 21.5% of the total share. This makes the USA the country with the most domain name registrations. 

China comes a distant second with around 20.5 million domains, representing 3.26% of the market share. Svalbard has the least registered domains at just 58, representing a <0.01% share.

Registered domains by country:

1. USA – 135.2 million (21.5%)
2. China – 20.5 million (3.26%)
3. Canada – 16.4 million (2.62%)
4. Iceland – 15.2 million (2.42%)
5. Netherlands – 8.3 million (1.32%)
6. France – 7.6 million (1.21%)
7. Germany – 6.6 million (1.06%)
8. UK – 6.6 million (1.05%)
9. Japan – 6.2 million (0.99%)

Sources: Domain Name Stat

What is the most popular domain name registrar?

Around 77.2 million domains are registered through GoDaddy, representing a 12.27% market share. This makes GoDaddy the number one most popular domain registrar.

NameCheap came a distant second with around 17.5 million registered domains—2.78% of the market share.

Top 10 domain name registrars

Rank	Registrar	Number of domain registrations	Market share
1	GoDaddy	77.2 million	12.27%
2	NameCheap	17.5 million	2.78%
3	Tuscows Domains Inc	11.2 million	1.78%
4	Google LLC	8.7 million	1.39%
5	Network Solutions	6.1 million	0.98%
6	IONOS	5.8 million	0.93%
7	PDR	5.4 million	0.86%
8	GMO Internet (Onamae)	5.3 million	0.84%
9	NameSilo	5.3 million	0.84%
10	OHV	5 million	0.78%

How many domain name registrars are there?

There are over 2,400 domain name registrars accredited with ICANN. These companies are spread worldwide and provide domain registration services and support.

Sources: Domain Name Stat, ICANN

What is the best domain name extension?

.com is the best domain extension by most metrics. According to a study by Growth Badger, .com domains are the most memorable and the most trusted. 

Which domain name extension do people trust most?

.com received a trust rating of 3.5 out of 5 in Growth Badger’s analysis, which makes it the most trusted domain extension.

.co came a close second with a trust rating of 3.4, and .org was third with a trust rating of 3.3 

.biz was seen as the least trustworth TLD with a trust rating of 2.9

Trust rating of popular domain name extensions (1 – 5):

• .com – 3.5
• .co – 3.4
• .org – 3.3
• .us – 3.3
• .net – 3.2
• .blog – 3.2
• .io – 3.0
• .biz – 2.9

Which domain name extension is most memorable?

.com is the most memorable domain name extension with a 44% memorability score. This means that on average, people correctly remember .com URLs 44% of the time.

.co came second again with a 33% memorability score. And .blog ranked last with a score of 24%.

Memorability score of popular domain name extensions:

• .com – 44%
• .co – 33%
• .org – 32%
• .biz – 31%
• .io – 28%
• .us – 29%
• .net – 25%
• .blog – 24%

Interestingly, .biz jumped up to position 4. This suggests that consumers are more likely to remember it despite being seen as less trustworthy than other extensions.

The upshot of this is clear: If you want to maximize value for your brand, .com is the obvious choice. But if you can’t secure a .com domain name that you like, .co is probably your next best option.

How long should a domain name be?

The perfect length for a domain name seems to be 66 characters or less, according to an analysis by Backlinko—but the shorter the better.

The SEO study found that the average domain name (URL) length for top 10 ranking results in Google was 66 characters. 

Most results on the first page were between 40 and 100 characters long, but the domains that ranked in position 1 had an average URLS of 9.2 characters short than those in position 10.

Backlinko also found that shorter URLs correlate with higher click-through rates (CTR)

Sources: Growth Badger, Backlinko

What are the most abused domain name extensions?

Professional spammers and malware operators tend to use certain types of domain names. According to Spamhaus analysis, .surf is the most commonly abused domain name and has the worst reputation. 

Over 87% of the domains using the .surf TLD are classed as ‘bad’. This may include sites riddled with malware or spam.

Top 10 most abused TLDs

TLD	Total domains	Bad domains (number)	Bad domains (% of total)	Badness index
.surf	797	698	87.6%	5.74
.link	19,876	10,133	51%	4.7
.ml	52,909	18,848	35.6%	3.51
.top	52,346	14,592	27.9%	2.67

Interestingly, .tk ranked #10 on the list of most abused TLDs, with 10,654 bad domains out of 66,186 analyzed, giving it a percentage of 16.1% and a bad index of 1.49. 

This is despite the fact that .tk is one of the most popular TLD extensions, as we revealed earlier, and highlights that it’s popularity is largely due to its prevalence amongst spammers.

Sources: SpamHaus

Fun domain name facts and statistics

What’s the most expensive domain ever purchased?

Tesla.com was the most expensive domain name ever purchased. It sold for $11 million in 2014. This should come a no surprise given that Tesla’s co-founder and largest shareholder also happens to be the richest man on earth.

Connect.com was the second most expensive domain name ever purchase. It sold for $10 million in 2022.

What was the first ever domain name?

Symbolics.com was the first domain name ever registered. It was registered by the brand of the same name, Symbolics Inc., way back in March 1985.

What’s the most visited domain in the world?

Google is the most visited domain in the world, with over 87 billion total visits. That’s more than 10x greater than the global popular.

Sources: Wikipedia, GCN, Similarweb

Final thoughts

That concludes our roundup of domain name statistics. We hope you found them useful—or at least interesting!

Want to learn more about the internet? Check out some of our other statistics roundups. Here are a few posts you might like:

• Web Design Statistics: How Many Web Designers Are There?
• Social Media Statistics (How Many People Use Social Media?)
• Site Speed Stats (How Fast Should a Website Load?)

Enjoy!