YNOT – Eleven million domain names were registered during the fourth quarter of 2009, bringing the total number of registered domains to more than 192 million, according to a report on the state of the domain-name industry published this week by internet infrastructure provider VeriSign Inc.Twenty-five years after the birth of dot-com, the 2009 population of registrations represents an increase since the end of 2008of nearly 15 million across all Top-Level Domains. In the fourth quarter of 2009, the base of domain name registrations grew by two percent over the third quarter of 2009 and eight percent over the fourth quarter of 2008.

New registrations in the fourth quarter of 2009 occurred at a rate of about 3.7 million per month.

Dot-com and dot-net remain the most common TLDs. The overall base of dot-com and dot-net names grew to 96.7 million at the end of 2009. This represents a two percent increase over the third quarter and a seven percent increase over the same quarter in 2008. New dot-com and dot-net registrations were added at an average of approximately 2.4 million per month in the last quarter of 2009 for a total of 7.3 million new registrations in the quarter. The renewal rate for the fourth quarter of 2009 was 71 percent, which represents a slight change from the third quarter of 2009, during which the renewal rate approximated 70.5 percent.

Following the leaders, dot-cn (China), dot-de (Germany) and dot-uk (United Kingdom) are the most popular domains. Domain-name registrations in the dot-uk space surged 11 percent in 2009 over 2008 levels. Dot-biz and dot-info registrations remain at steady levels, although they have not grown since their introduction.

According to other data revealed in VeriSign’s quarterly state-of-the-industry report, 37 percent (nearly two in five) registered domain names resolve to either a single webpage or nothing at all.

VeriSign’s average daily Domain Name System (DNS) query load during the fourth quarter was 52 billion per day, with peaks as high as 61 billion per day — roughly twice 2008’s volume. DNS query load jumped 48 percent for the daily average with a 31-percent increase for peak daily queries as compared to fourth quarter 2008.