Did you know that the first registered domain name was Symbolics.com on March 15, 1985? Symbolics was a computer manufacturer, but now the site is a museum of technological “firsts.” Since then, registered domain names have proliferated around the world, with countries adopting unique extensions called country code top-level domains, or ccTLDs. The team at Nominus has created a comprehensive guide to the world’s most powerful top-level domains that can provide fascinating insights into how the Internet was built, which countries have the most extensive Internet presence, and which domains might best meet your needs:
Do countries own domain names?
ICANN says no, but there are conflicts over ownership and even multi-million dollar sales, which we’ll explore later. For now, let’s explore some of the main country code top-level domains. What are country code top-level domains? These domains are used exclusively for countries, regions, and sovereign states. Each country code top-level domain consists of two letters. Read on to learn more about international domain names:
North American ccTLDs and the total number of active domains in each:
The largest ccTLD in North America is .ca, which has 3,150,895 active domains associated with it. Is .com or .ca better? That depends on your goals. Google.ca will tend to include addresses with .ca, but if the goal is to reach a US audience or a global audience, .com is usually a better choice.
South American ccTLDs and total number of active domains per domain:
The most popular ccTLD in South America is .br, which is associated with Brazil. Launched in 1989, it is very popular in Brazil and offers the largest Portuguese web presence.
European ccTLDs and total number of active domains per domain:
The ccTLD for the most active domain in Europe is .de, which is also the second most popular TLD in the world. In many Romance languages (Spanish, French, Portuguese, etc.), the word “de” is equivalent to “of” in English, which is used in domain name registrations. .de is used by Romance web hosts that offer custom websites, such as elforo.de (“theforum.of”), which encode the website name into the URL, such as elforo.de/wikipedia, which means “theforum.of/Wikipedia”.
African ccTLDs and the total number of active domains in each:
Africa’s largest country TLD is .ga, which is associated with Gabon. In 2013, the domain’s manager, Gabon Telecom, entered into a partnership with international domain registrar Freenom to offer registration of free .ga domains. These quickly became some of the most popular free domains offered by Freenom and Safecow.
Total number of active domains in Asia ccTLDs and each domain:
The largest country code top-level domain in Asia is .cn, which is associated with China. It was established in 1990 and is sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Oceania ccTLDs and the total number of active domains in each:
The most popular ccTLD in Oceania is .tk, which is associated with Tokelau, an island territory of New Zealand. In fact, it is one of the most popular domain names of any country! Why is .tk so popular? The Tokelau government partnered with the communications company Teletok to offer free domain name registration to any individual, which led to an influx of users. However, free is not always good. It became a popular TLD used by scammers, especially for phishing attacks.
Another interesting fact about Oceania ccTLDs has to do with Tuvalu, a small island nation with a population of 11,000 people. In 1995, Tuvalu was assigned the ccTLD .tv – little did they know what a cash cow it would become due to the rapid growth of online video streaming. In 2022, Tuvalu struck a deal with web hosting company GoDaddy to make around $10 million per year by leasing .tv to companies like Twitch. With its first $1 million in profits, Tuvalu was able to pay its membership fee to join the United Nations. It’s incredible how powerful a small string of letters can be!
What about Antarctica?
Is there internet service in Antarctica? Yes! Believe it or not, even though Antarctica is not a country, it even has its own ccTLD. There are only 102 active domains for .aq, which is reserved for organizations working in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean.
Overview of Top-Level Domains
Now that we’ve explored the world’s largest country code top-level domains, let’s take a deeper look at top-level domains, including the different types of top-level domains, the most popular top-level domains overall, and which top-level domains are the most trusted and popular.
What are top-level domains?
A top-level domain is a domain that ranks highest in the Internet’s hierarchical domain name system after the root domain. In simpler terms, a TLD is everything after the last period in a domain name.
What are examples of top-level domains?
The most prevalent top-level domain is .com, which has the most active domains. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) maintains authority over all top-level domains on the Internet and assigns responsibility for these domains to individual organizations. For example, the American company VeriSign operates all of the .com and .net top-level domains. Top-level domains can also help indicate what those domains are used for.
What are the different types of top-level domains?
There are five official types of top-level domains:
Generic Top-Level Domains: Generic top-level domains (gTLDs) include some of the most common ones, such as .com, .net, and .org. The creation of new gTLDs was once strictly regulated by ICANN, but those restrictions were relaxed in 2010, leading to an influx of lesser-known top-level domains like .top and .xyz.
Country Code TLDs: Country code TLDs (ccTLDs) are reserved for use by countries, regions, and sovereign states. Some examples of country code TLDs include .au for Australia and .jp for Japan.
Sponsored TLDs: Sponsored TLDs (sTLDs) represent ethnic, geographic, or professional communities. Each has a designated sponsor; for example, .app is for the developer community and is sponsored by Google. Another, .gov, is overseen by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Infrastructure TLDs: This category includes only one TLD: .arpa. It’s named after DARPA, the U.S. military research organization that helped shape the modern internet. In fact, .arpa was the first top-level domain ever. It is now used exclusively for infrastructure duties, such as reverse DNS lookups.
Reserved TLDs: Reserved top-level domains are domains that may not be used without permission from the original creator. They are often used for operational and engineering reasons, such as private testing, experimentation, documentation examples, and demonstrations.
How many top-level domains are there?
According to ICANN’s total list, there are 1,486 top-level domains.
What are the best top-level domains?
According to GrowthBadger, people are 33% more likely to remember URLs with .com domains than with other top-level domains. .com is also the most trusted domain extension. When people can’t remember a URL, they are 3.8 times more likely to think the URL ends in .com.
What is the most common domain extension in the world?
What are the most popular domain extensions? It is well known that the domain extension .com is the most used and trusted. Here are the 50 largest top-level domains based on the number of currently active domains attached to them:
1.com — 159,902,632 active domains
2.de — 16,141,315 active domains
3.net — 13,170,783 active domains
4.org — 10,614,272 active domains
5.uk — 10,593,406 active domains
6.cn — 8,980,611 active domains
7.ga — 7,049,929 active domains
8.nl — 5,635,081 active domains
9.cf — 5,383,367 active domains
10.ml — 5,344,979 active domains
11.tk — 5,041,535 active domains
12.ru — 4,995,267 active domains
13.br — 4,349,270 active domains
14.gq — 4,307,508 active domains
15.xyz — 4,130,573 active domains
16..fr — 3,867,191 active domains
17..eu — 3,664,237 active domains
18..info — 3,653,720 active domains
19.co — 3,396,167 active domains
20..au — 3,255,646 active domains
21.ca — 3,150,895 active domains
22.it — 3,125,192 active domains
23.in — 2,662,613 active domains
24.ch — 2,375,786 active domains
25.pl — 2,349,625 active domains
26.es — 1,950,923 active domains
27.online — 4,307,508 active domains
28.us — 1,844,273 active domains
29.top — 1,710,824 active domains
30.jp – 1,6137,56 active domains
31.biz — 1,425,740 active domains
32.se — 1,408,367 active domains
33.at — 1,401,807 active domains
34.dk — 1,398,484 active domains
35.cz — 1,374,684 active domains
36.za — 1,264,492 active domains
37.me — 1,196,876 active domains
38.ir — 1,169,743 active domains
39.icu — 1,092,501 active domains
40.shop — 1,040,404 active domains
41.kr — 1,012,638 active domains
42.site — 1,007,427 active domains
43.mx — 992,386 active domains
44.hu — 852,097 active domains
45.io — 847,444 active domains
46.cc — 836,363 active domains
47.club — 822,231 active domains
48.no — 805,466 Active domains
49.cyou — 765,244 active domains
50.store — 759,128 active domains
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