REVEALED: UK is world’s 4th largest digital superpower & the most expensive websites in 2021.
A new report by TechRadar has determined which countries have the most registered domains, showing how the world would look based on internet size instead of landmass, by analyzing domains registered by ccTLD, the number of top-level domain types worldwide, the world’s most popular TLDs, the number of domains registered under each major registrar (e.g. GoDaddy), the most expensive domains ever sold and the current value of these websites.
The UK is the World’s 4th Biggest Country on the Internet
With over 17 million registered domains, the UK is the world’s fourth biggest country listed.
It might come as no surprise to see that China claims the top spot. With a population of 1.39 billion people, the country is home to 25,663,579 registered domains, accounting for 11.72% of the entire internet.
The .cn TLD (top-level domain) is predominantly used by Chinese businesses, with enough of them in operation to make China a domain superpower.
Interestingly, Tokelau (a tiny group of islands in the South Pacific Ocean) ranks second with 25,124,143 registered domains. This is due to the Tokelau TLD (.tk) being free for the first 12 months and only charging a small subscription after the free period ends.
The third most powerful country online is Germany with a huge 22,111,380 registered domains, beating the United Kingdom in fourth place with 17,507,523 registered domains.
Surprisingly, the United States is not a digital superpower. Ranking 14th in the report for the official .us TLD, the U.S. only has 4,185,568 registered domains making it less powerful than Brazil (4.3m), Mali (5.6m), and Gabon (6.5m).
The French TLD, .fr, is the smallest in the world with only 5,373,766 registered domains due to each of the territories holding their own separate domain.
TLD.com is World’s Most Popular Domain
The report revealed the .com TLD accounts for a huge 34.98% of the internet, with 176,017,475 domains using it. This is a worldwide TLD despite being registered in the States as it was originally used for commercial websites.
This is followed by .cn with 5.10% of the domains on the internet, .tk with 5.00%, .de with 4.40% and .uk with 3.48%.
Interestingly 28.8% of all registered domains are classed as ‘Other’. This includes individual domains whose share is less than 1% such as personal suffixes, blogging platforms, or social media sites.
Most Expensive Domain
The most expensive domain is Heathinsurance.com which is now valued at over $6.11 billion despite being sold for $8.13 million in 2019.
This is followed by Cars.com which was bought for $872,300,000 and is now valued at $934,076,346, and LasVegas.com which was bought for $90,000,000 and is now worth $125,310,471.
California.com has seen one of the biggest increases in price, now valued at $46,371,954, the domain has seen a huge $40 million increase in value since it was sold in 2019.
Some of the biggest industries that feature on the list are automotive, health and insurance, and p*rnography.
Interestingly, all of the most expensive domains in the list are .com TLDs.
