People attempting to launch a personal or business-based website may have issues trying to find a catchy name or URL that hasn't been registered already.
VeriSign said 11 million new domain names were registered in the fourth quarter of 2009, pushing the total number to 192 million at year's end.
At the end of the third quarter, there were 187 million registered domain names. That was up from 177 million at the end of 2008.
Quick math shows that sign-ups work out to be about 3.7 million new registrations per month in the fourth quarter, the company said. New websites with the .com and .net domains occured at a rate of about 2.4 million per month in the fourth quarter.
And those that have registered the name they want are keeping them at a steady pace as well, VeriSign said, as the renewal rate in the fourth quarter was 71 percent, about the same as it was in the fourth quarter of 2008.
VeriSign said about 88 percent of domain names lead to operating sites, while a quarter of domain names connect to one-page websites, and about two-thirds connect to multiple page sites.
