Category Archives: Domain Names

Domain Names

Domain Names – big numbers

There are now almost 200 million domain names registered, and we’ll certainly see the figure hit this milestone later this year. Compared to the first quarter of 2009, domain name registrations grew by 11 million, or 6 percent. Domain registrations seem to beat the economy no matter how its performing.

Total Domain Registrations q1 2010

A decline in .cn (china) registrations has resulted in a shift in the global leader board. The top ranking domain name extenstions for first quarter 2010 are now:

  1. .com
  2. .de (Germany)
  3. .net
  4. .cn (China)
  5. .uk (United Kingdom)
  6. .org
  7. .info
  8. .nl (Netherlands)
  9. .eu (European Union)
  10. .ru (Russia)

Country code domains (ccTLD) make up around 40% of the total registrations, with 76.3 million ccTLD registrations at the end of 1st quarter 2010.

Big Numbers

Verisign, the registry for .com and .net, handled an average number of DNS queries of 54 BILLION per DAY in the first part of 2010. Peaks were as high as 63.2 billion. The daily average has increased 43% since last year. Taken together with the slower rise in registrations, this suggest more internet users and more internet use by users. These mind-boggling numbers underline how important DNS is to our internet ecosystem. The fees for registering domains are spent many ways, but the most important two are the DNS and the database of who owns what (WHOIS). The registry for .com and .net has maintained 100 percent operation accuracy and stability for the past 12 years, making .com and .net domains amongst the most reliable in the world.

Security

Operational later this year is DNSSEC (Domain Name System Security Extensions). This behind-the-scenes add on to the DNS system will be offered by 2020Media to all its customers automatically as it is rolled out, so all our clients will be offered the ability to upgrade the security and stability of their domains.

About Domain Name Security Extensions (DNSSEC)
DNSSEC ensures that requests to visit an Internet web site reach the intended destination. DNSSEC protects against security vulnerabilities such as DNS cache poisoning, pharming and DNS redirection, commonly exploited to commit fraud and criminal attacks

Domain Names, Technical

Brusells ICANN Meeting

ICANN Brussels
Promotional items from potential new gTLD applicants

2020Media’s Management team attended the recent ICANN (policy making body for gTLD domains and IP numbers) meeting in Brussels, Belgium. The week long conference is part of ICANN 3 annual worldwide meetings to engage with all internet stakeholders, from representatives of government to non-commercial internet using private individuals.

The main topics for discussion were the release of new gTLD (global top level domain names), and the .xxx domain. The last was rather a moot point as ICANN revealed on the last public discussion that they had taken a decision in principle to approve the application, subject to various caveats. After an independent review which found ICANN’s previous decisions was flawed, the board really had few options left.

New domains like .shop, .canon, .london provoked much more discussion, this time about the various guidelines and rules that ICANN has come up with. ICANN is seeking comment on it’s latest release of the applicant guidebook.

Of note to the technically minded was further steps along the road to secure DNS (DNSSEC) with more top level domain signings. The root zone itself is due to go live in July.

Domain Names

Match your domain name to your target country

Google
SEO hints from Google

It’s no secret that Google uses several factors to determine where a web site is “located” and thus determine its relevance to each individual searcher. But there has been a lot of debate about which factors are most important.

The two I hear mostly commonly are if the domain has a particular country code domain name and where the web host is.

Now Google search czar Matt Cutts has given us a pretty clear answer.

One person asked a question that we forgot to make a video for: “Can you list in order of importance the things that make a site to be seen by google as a site from a particular country?” Since we didn’t make it as a video, here’s the answer as a quick bonus:
  1. country code TLD (ccTLD) such as .de or .fr
  2. geotargeting in the webmaster console
  3. IP address
There may be other signals, but those are the biggies and the order that I’d put them in.

Matt Cutt’s post shows that the most important thing Google uses to determine what country your web site is in is the country code top level domain name. How this applies to USA websites or .com domains isn’t clear – is .com considered ‘USA’? Certainly hardly anyone uses the .us domain extension for USA websites.

Many thanks to DomainNameWire for the headsup.
Domain Names, Technical

How DNS works

Video on How DNS Works
Video on How DNS Works

If you’ve ever wondered how DNS works, and the technical explanations make your head spin, there’s a great new video on YouTube that cuts out the jargon and shows you what happens when you type a domain name into your browser, or send an email.

How DNS Works

The video was produced by CENTR, a european trade association for all the european domain registries.

If you’re interested in getting more domain names, in different extensions, 2020Media is able to obtain them for you. Contact us, and we’ll be able to help.

Domain Names

New top level domains

ICANN is introducing a range of new top level domains (think .com, .net, .org) which will be open to anyone who cares to think of one. So far suggestions have varied from geo-domains like .paris, .london and .nyc, to topics like .eco, .food and .music.

whoWhen these new domains come along, will they be useful? The argument often given is that you replace the three meaningless characters to the right of the dot, namely com or net,  with characters that actually provide guidance to the user about what will be found at the web site using that TLD (think .music, .london).

The gTLD process is bogged down at the moment, but ICANN have announced that country code domains (like .cn, .ru) will be translated into their own native character sets. This has been on the cards for a long time and its great to see it should soon be a reality.