Verisign has released their latest quarterly Domain Name Industry Brief covering the 3rd quarter of 2017. We have typically seen steady growth in the number of domain names registered worldwide but this time out there was a slight decline from the previous quarter. On the plus side, the number was up from a year ago.

The VeriSign report said 3Q-2017 closed with approximately 330.7 million domain name registrations across all top-level domains (TLDs), a decrease of approximately 1.2 million domain name registrations at the conclusion of the 2nd quarter. The entire fall off can be attributed to millions of new gTLD domains (primarily .xyz and .top) that were dropped 

after essentially being given away last year with prices as low as a penny. Year over year, the number of registrations across all extensions still managed to grow 1.1%

Verisign administers the .com and .net TLDs and said those two extensions closed the year with a combined total of 145.8 million registrations - up 1.2% from the same time a year ago. As of Sept. 30, 2017, the .com domain name base totaled 130.8 million domain name registrations (by far the world's most popular TLD), while the .net domain name base totaled 15.0 million. 

ccTLDs managed to grow at a faster clip, finishing 3Q-2017 with 144.7 million country code domains registered - a jump of 3.2% year over year. That number represents a smaller 0.3% increase from the previous quarter though. 

As of Sept. 30, 2017, the new gTLDs had a total of 21.1 million domain name registrations, which represents 6.4% of total domain name registrations worldwide. There is much more data in the latest Verisign DNIB that you can download here.