Six million domain names were added to the Internet in the first quarter of 2015: Verisign

Verisign today announced six million domain names were added to the Internet in the first quarter of 2015, bringing the total number of registered domain names to 294 million worldwide across all top-level domains (TLDs) as of March 31, 2015, according to the latest Domain Name Industry Brief.

The increase of six million domain names globally equates to a growth rate of 1.9 percent over the fourth quarter of 2014. Worldwide registrations have grown by 17.8 million, or 6.5 percent, year over year.

The .com and .net TLDs experienced aggregate growth in the first quarter of 2015, reaching a combined total of approximately 133.0 million .com and .net domain names in the domain name base. This represents a 3.1 percent increase year over year. As of March 31, 2015, the domain name base of .com equaled 117.9 million names, while .net equaled 15.1 million names.

In the first quarter, Verisign processed 8.7 million new domain name registrations for .com and .net, as compared to 8.6 million domain names for the same period in 2014.

During the first quarter of 2015, Verisign's average daily Domain Name System (DNS) query load was 119 billion across all TLDs operated by Verisign, with a peak of 165 billion. Compared to the previous quarter, the daily average increased 8.6 percent and the peak increased 13.1 percent. Year over year, the daily average query load increased 40.2 percent and the peak query load increased 37.9 percent.

Verisign publishes the Domain Name Industry Brief to provide Internet users throughout the world with statistical and analytical research and data on the domain name industry. The first quarter 2015 Domain Name Industry Brief, as well as previous reports, can be obtained at VerisignInc.com/DNIB