VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN), announced that approximately 15 million domain names were added to the Internet in the fourth quarter of 2015, bringing the total number of registered domain names to approximately 314 million worldwide across all top-level domains (TLDs).
The increase of approximately 15 million domain names globally equates to a growth rate of 5% over the third quarter of 2015.
Worldwide registrations have grown by 25.9 million, or 9%, year over year.
The .com and .net TLDs experienced aggregate growth in the fourth quarter of 2015, reaching a combined total of approximately 139.8 million .com and .net domain names representing a 6.3% increase year over year.
As of Dec. 31, 2015, the domain name base of .com equaled 124 million names, while .net equaled 15.8 million names.
