Let’s get down to it. These are the 101 amazing facts about domain names that you may have missed.

101 facts about domain names

1. 1. 1. A domain name consists of a protocol (such as HTTP or HTTPS), subdomain (such as www or admin or blog), domain name (Google, Webmaster, WhoAPI), and a top-level domain (com, ninja, us, eu)
      2. In 1983 Paul Mockapetris invented the Domain Name System
      3. March 15, 1985, Symbolics.com the oldest domain name was registered
      4. 1997 CNNIC – China Internet Network Information Center was started
      5. 1998 Domain Name System (DNS) was privatized and ICANN was started
      6. 1999 Network Solutions is still selling .com, .net and .org domain names
      7. 2000 Verisign acquired Network Solutions
      8. 2003 Truth in Domain Names Act was submitted
      9. 2005 US Principles on the Internet DNS to ensure security and stability
      10. 2007 Homeaway.com bought VacationRentals.com for $35M
      11. 2010 Quinstreet bought Insurance.com for $35.6M
      12. April 2012 Mike Mann registers 14,962 domains in 24 hours
      13. 2014 More than 100 new generic top level domains
      14. March 31, 2016, total of 326.4M domain names registered
      15. 1500+ valid TLDs are available
      16. Top level domains or TLDs are generally classified into two categories gTLD (generic) and ccTLD (country code)
      17. gTLDs are then split into two categories, “sponsored” and “unsponsored” sTLDs and uTLDs
      18. Domains were free until 1995
      19. Apple.com was the 64 registered domain name
      20. Domain name has 5 steps in a life cycle
      21. 5 steps of a domain life cycle are: Available domain name, Active domain name, Expired domain name, Redemption/grace period, Pending deletion

          

      22. November 7, 1985, Northrop Corporation registers nortrop.com
      23. January 9, 1986, Xerox corporation registers xerox.com
      24. March 3, 1986, Hewlett-Packard registers hp.com
      25. March 19, 1986, IBM registers ibm.com
      26. March 25, 1986, Sun Microsystems registers sun.com
      27. March 25, 1986, Intel register intel.com
      28. March 25, 1986, Texas Instruments register ti.com
      29. April 25, 1986, AT&T registers att.com
      30. September 2, 1986, Boeing registers boeing.com
      31. September 29, 1986, Siemens AG registers siemens.com
      32. November 17, 1986, Adobe Systems registers adobe.com
      33. November 17, 1986, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) registers amd.com
      34. February 19, 1987, Apple Computer registers apple.com
      35. April 4, 1987, Philips registers philips.com
      36. May 14, 1987, Cisco Systems registers cisco.com
      37. July 27, 1987, Lockheed Corporation registers lockheed.com
      38. Jump forward to today: 331.9M domains were registered in the 2nd quarter of 2017 – around 0.4% increase over the 1st quarter
      39. Domain name registrations have grown by 6.7M (2.1%) year over year
      40. 144.2M ccTLD domain names were registered in the 2nd quarter of 2017 – a 0.8% increase over 1st quarter
      41. ccTLD domain name registrations have grown by 2.6% year over year
      42. Top 10 largest TLDs as of Q2 2017 are: .com, .cn, .tk, .de, .net, .uk, .org, .ru, .info, .nl
      43. Top 10 trending keywords for July 2017 for .com TLD were: token, vegan, juan, bail, duct, degree, export, bonds, tesla, trainings
      44. Top 10 trending keywords for August 2017 for .com TLD were: crypto, bit, mortgage, block, chain, loan, houston, harvey, equity, attorney
      45. Top 10 trending keywords for September 2017 for .com TLD were: irma, pic, lean, jerseys, prices, parks, disaster, porter, drain
      46. Top 10 trending keywords for July 2017 for .net TLD were: future, prime, weed, mine, hero, shore, tube, last, poker, drag
      47. Top 10 trending keywords for August 2017 for .net TLD were: west, bit, he, soft, texas, repair, camp, houson, harvey, med
      48. Top 10 trending keywords for September 2017 for .net TLD were: base, tile, testing, drain, relief, tickets, proofing, inspections, dependent, rise
      49. October 2015, Google registrar during an error sells google.com to Sanmay Ved (for a detailed explanation click here)
      50. Top 10 domain registrars (by number of domain registrations) as of November 2017: GoDaddy, eNom, Tucows, Network Solutions, HiChina, Public Domain Registry, TurnCommerce, 1&1 Internet, GMO Internet, Wild West Domains,
      51. 54,384,834 domain names were registered at GoDaddy
      52. 9,500,373 domain names were registered at eNom
      53. 8,845,425 domain names were registered at Tucows
      54. 6,536,823 domain names were registered at Network Solutions
      55. 6,231,689 domain names were registered at HiChina
      56. 4,931,784 domain names were registered at Public Domain Registry
      57. 4,796,864 domain names were registered at TurnCommerce
      58. 4,514,779 domain names were registered at 1&1 Internet
      59. 3,562,386 domain names were registered at GMO Internet
      60. 3,067,782 domain names were registered at Wild West Domains

          

      61. Top 10 registrars by country: United States, Canada, Germany, China, India, Japan, France, Denmark, Australia, Spain
      62. United States: 92,868,747
      63. Canada: 10,648,270
      64. Germany: 9,826,013
      65. China: 9,062,979
      66. India: 5,897,138
      67. Japan: 4,827,112
      68. France: 3,325,309
      69. Denmark: 1,657,611
      70. Australia: 1,249,589
      71. Spain: 844,851
      72. ccTLD .im (the Isle of Man) is often used by instant messaging programs and services
      73. ccTLD .co (Columbia) is marketed as commercial, corporation or company
      74. ccTLD .dj (Djibouti) is used for CD merchants and disc jockeys (DJs)
      75. ccTLD .tm (Turkmenistan) can be used as trademark
      76. ccTLD .me (Montenegro) can be used for personalization (popular service includes about.me)
      77. ccTLD .tv (Tuvalu) is used for the television or entertainment industry
      78. ccTLD .vg (British Virgin Islands) is sometimes used to abbreviate video games
      79. ccTLD .ws (Samoa, earlier Western Samoa) is marketed as “website”
      80. ccTLD .io (the British Indian Ocean Territory) is commonly used by tech companies
      81. Big brands often use short names here are a few
      82. Amazon’s URL shortcut is a.co
      83. Facebook’s Messenger = m.me
      84. Twitter’s official shortcut is t.co
      85. w.org redirects to WordPress
      86. Google’s official shortcut is g.co
      87. Having more than one domain name for the same website does not help to rank
      88. Hyphens and numbers should be avoided in domain names (although some companies that are located in the Eu countries like Germany do like hyphens)
      89. You always want to be 100% sure that you’re not registering a domain name that has already been trademarked by someone else
      90. After the EMD update in 2012, exact match domains (domains with keywords) are not as good as before
      91. The shorter domain name, the better
      92. Register for whois privacy if you want to reduce the amount of spam you receive
      93. Age of domain name does not matter
      94. 2/3 of the top 1000 websites are on a .com domain name
      95. Google has the most covered domain name on different TLDs
      96. Harvard, MIT and Stanford have some of the oldest domains and most visited websites in the world
      97. .com isn’t just the most registered TLD, it is also the most visited (websites with highest activity are on .com)
      98. Nissan does not own nissan.com (source)
      99. Most expensive domain name ever sold is lasvegas.com, sold for 12 million dollars cash in 2005 with a payment plan up to 2040 for a total sum of 90 million dollars (source)
      100. Largest domain name registrar GoDaddy was founded in 1997 as Jomax Technologies. Rebranded in 1999 as Go Daddy. Then again rebranded in 2006 as GoDaddy.
      101. In April 2005 GoDaddy became the largest registrar for the first time

We hope that you liked these amazing domain names facts and that you will comment your favorite one. Also, please list any that we may have missed, or that you think were listed here in error. If you liked the list, please share it with your peers. Special thanks to Website Builder for creating their infographic! Click on the image below to view the entire infographic.