Verisign has released their latest quarterly Domain Name Industry Brief covering the 4th quarter of 2015. The operator of the .com and .net registries reported that the year ended with approximately 314 million domain name registrations across all top-level domains (TLDs), an increase of approximately 15 million domains over the previous quarter. That 5% jump is a very impressive gain for a single quarter. The big move up in 4Q boosted year over year gains by 9%  with 25.9 million domains added since the end of 2014. Well over half of the 2015 registrations were added in the closing quarter alone.

Verisign's flagship TLDs, .com and .net,  had a combined total of approximately 139.8 million domain names when the year ended (124 million in .com and 15.8 million in .net) - adding 12.2 million new domains in those two extensions in 2015 (a 9.5% rise year over year). The 12.2 million names added in 2015 also represents a major increase from the 8.2 million that were added in 2014.  

The latest brief also includes registration statistics for new gTLDs and ccTLDs (a category that grew 7.7% year over year), along with information in the top trending keywords . com and .net. For more information, copies of the Q4-2015 Domain Name Industry Brief, or to view past reports, visit VerisignInc.com/DNIB, where you can also find the Q4-2015 infographic.