It was back on March 15, 1985, that Symbolics.com became the first ever domain name to be registered. At the time, the company was a computer manufacturer. Today, the website serves as a reference of sorts for the many “firsts” in the world of technology over the years. Ever since that site became the first ever registered domain name, millions upon millions of more domains have been created over the last few decades, with countries even having their own unique, country-specific domain extensions.
From the research team at Nominus comes this new infographic that looks at which countries have the most popular top-level domains in the world.
Leading Country Code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs) by number of domains
According to their extensive research, it was found that the country with the most country code top-level domains in the world was Germany with 16,141,315 (in Germany, the country code specific domain extension is .de). The only other country with more than 9,000, according to their research, was the United Kingdom (with a .uk domain extension) with 10,593,406.
Other countries within the top ten include;
- China (.cn) with 8.9 million\
- Gabon (.ga) with 7 million
- The Netherlands (.nl) with 5.6 million
- Central African Republic (.cf) with 5.3 million
- Mali (.ml) with 5.3 million
- Tokelau (.tk) with 5 million
- Russia (.ru) with 4.9 million
- Brazil (.br) with 4.3 million.
Other countries within the top 25 include; Equatorial Guinea, France, European Union, Colombia, Australia, Canada, Italy, India, Switzerland, Poland, Spain, United States, Belgium, Japan, and Sweden.
Of the 25 countries featured on this ranking, there are 17 that have at least three million country code top-level domains. Of the country code top-level domains out there, .ca for Canada, in North America, has 3,150,895 active domains associated with it, which is the most.
However, the most popular may be .br in South Africa, which is associated with the country of Brazil. This unique domain extension was first introduced in 1989, and is very popular among those internet users that speak Portuguese.
