Afilias, provider of Internet infrastructure services and registry for the .INFO domain, released its 2009 .INFO Annual Report. The .INFO TLD has had a tough run the past several years, but things are most definitely looking up.
.INFO Ranks seventh among all 270+ top level domains worldwide, boasting over 5.3 million domains - 70% of which resolve to real content (although there are only 1 million unique websites).
The top regions for registrations continue to be North America (61 percent) and Europe (23 percent). However, Asian markets are growing and the region now holds 11 percent of .INFO registrations. .INFO also continues to gain penetration into the registrar marketplace which offers domain names for retail sale. .INFO is now available with over 330 distributors that support over 90% of sales volume in the worldwide domain name industry.
"After 8 years of concerted effort, .INFO is the undisputed most successful new TLD launched to date, accounting for over 40 percent of all new TLD registrations," said Roland LaPlante, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer for Afilias ".INFO's experience provides many lessons applicable to the launch of new domains to come. As an organization, Afilias has been able to use our experiences with .INFO as a benchmark for successfully gaining approval for, launching and growing more new TLDs than any other registry services provider."