As previously reported, the four millionth .NL domain name was registered this week. On reaching the four million mark, SIDN also announced they are the ccTLD with the highest number of registered domain names per person in the respective country with almost one domain name registered for every four of the 16.8 million residents of The Netherlands.

For those interested in the trivia of who, when and where, the four millionth domain was supposedly registered by Tom ter Heerdt from Didam in The Netherlands who registered the domain name tomgoesusa.nl about midday on 18 August. And to celebrate ter Heerdt was given an Apple iPad and all registration fees on the domain name are waived for as long as he keeps it.

One of the reasons for the success of .NL are the liberal registration policies that allow for anyone, anywhere in the world to register a .NL domain name whereas as many other ccTLDs put restrictions on registrants, either requiring a contact within the country or other restrictions.

Among ccTLD (country code Top Level Domains), .NL ranks fourth, with 4,008,247 domain names registered.

The largest ccTLD is .DE (Germany) with 13,798,813 registrations followed by .UK (United Kingdom) with 8,654,260. .CN (China) is third with 6,864,998 registrations and .EU (European Union) is fifth with 3,241,351 registrations. All registration figures are for 19 August except for .CN and .UK whose statistics are dated 30 July.

“All around the world, internet use is breaking records every year,” commented Roelof Meijer, SIDN’s CEO.

“In line with the global trend, the percentage of Dutch people who can access the world wide web is growing all the time. Between 2006 and 2009 the figure went from 85% to 93% (source: Statistics Netherlands). On top of that, it’s relatively easy to register a .NL domain name, .NL is one of the most secure ccTLDs there is and our registrars offer a good range of related services. Put all those things together, and you have the success story that is the .NL domain. Every day, about 2800 new domain names are registered. Of course, some domain names are always dropping out of use as well, so the net growth is about 1600 a day. At that rate, we should see the five-millionth .NL domain name within a few years.’

To register your .NL domain name, check out Europe Registry here.

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