Blog

Insights on Internet domains, DNS intelligence, and dataset research.

April 29, 2026 30 min read

France's .fr: 4.32 Million Registrations, 9.27 Million Apex Domains, and the Identity-Verified Professional Namespace That Almost Nobody Uses

We analyzed 20.37 million .fr hostnames against AFNIC's registry data to find that France engineered the most architecturally elaborate national namespace in Europe — nine identity-verified professional TLDs, four regional culture TLDs, six government and sectoral zones — and the verified-profession TLDs collectively generate fewer hostnames than a single small association. Sixty percent of all .fr apexes resolve to exactly one hostname.

April 28, 2026 23 min read

Spain's .es: 2.1 Million Registrations, 10 Million Hostnames, and the Plurinational Internet Behind a State-Owned ccTLD

We analyzed 10.15 million .es hostnames and cross-referenced Red.es registry data to find that one ISP holds 21% of Spain's namespace, the .nom.es personal domain has effectively never existed online, and Spain's national identity is split across four parallel TLDs — one of which got raided by the Civil Guard in 2017.

April 06, 2026 26 min read

The Internet's Lingua Franca: We Classified 1.74 Million Websites Across 54 Country Domains — 64% Are in English

We used LLMSE to classify the language of 1.74 million websites across 54 country-code TLDs and cross-referenced findings with the DomainsProject dataset. 64% are in English — but the number masks five distinct mechanisms driving English prevalence, from colonial inheritance (.in at 95.9%) to outright resistance (.jp at 7.0%). The internet's default language is not a choice most countries made. It is a condition most countries inherited, adopted for commerce, or actively fight.

April 02, 2026 27 min read

.io: 13.2 Million Domains, Zero Residents, and the Tech Industry's Most Precarious TLD

We analyzed 13.2 million .io records across 1.59 million unique domains and found a TLD split in two: 6,144 platform domains host 50% of all records, while 335,802 exist as single entries. The tech industry built its infrastructure on a country code belonging to a territory with no civilian population — and the UK's treaty to hand sovereignty to Mauritius puts that infrastructure on a clock no one in Silicon Valley is watching.

March 27, 2026 16 min read

From 329 to 70 Million: The Internet's Most Extreme Country-Code TLDs and What They Reveal

North Korea has 329 domains. Eritrea has 384. Vatican City has 1,799. Germany has 70 million. We profiled every country-code TLD in our dataset with fewer than 100,000 entries and found a taxonomy of digital absence — from hermit states that barely exist online to micro-nations whose ccTLDs were hijacked by global commerce. The ratio between the largest and smallest national namespaces is 212,500 to 1.

March 26, 2026 16 min read

Domain Distribution by Continent: 520 Million ccTLD Domains and the Map of Digital Inequality

We counted every country-code domain in our dataset — 520 million entries across 245 ccTLDs — and mapped them to continents. Europe holds 54% of all ccTLD domains with 280 million entries despite having 10% of global population. Africa holds 3.1% with 16 million entries despite having 18% of global population. Japan alone has more ccTLD domains than every African country combined. The data reveals a digital divide that is not closing — it is hardening.

March 25, 2026 27 min read

.ai Domains and the AI Gold Rush: How a Caribbean Island Became Silicon Valley's Hottest Namespace

We analyzed 3.45 million .ai domain names and subdomains — including 995,445 unique root registrations — in the DomainsProject dataset and cross-referenced registry data, aftermarket sales, and government revenue figures to map the .ai explosion — from 48,000 registrations in 2018 to over one million today, and what it means for the 14,000 residents of Anguilla now collecting an estimated $93 million per year from two letters.

March 25, 2026 13 min read

The Rise of .xyz: From $25,000 Gamble to 45 Million Domains and the New gTLD's Only Success Story

We parsed 45 million entries in the .xyz namespace from our dataset and found 11 million direct registrations generating 34 million subdomains — a 3:1 ratio that reveals a TLD being used as live infrastructure, not parked inventory. .xyz is the largest new gTLD on Earth and the 4th largest gTLD overall, larger than China's .cn, the UK's .uk, and Brazil's .br. It is the only new gTLD that broke into the top 5, and the data shows why: a combination of $1 promotional pricing, crypto/Web3 adoption, developer infrastructure, and one very famous corporate endorsement.

March 24, 2026 20 min read

China's .CN: 1 Billion Internet Users, 21 Million Domains, and the Platform Economy That Ate the Web

We parsed 22.4 million entries in the .cn namespace from our dataset and found 5.65 million unique registrable domains — roughly 27% of CNNIC's 21 million registry count. China has 1.09 billion internet users but only one .cn domain for every 52 of them. The data reveals why: a regulatory gauntlet of real-name verification and ICP licensing, a super-app economy where 4.3 million WeChat Mini Programs replace websites, and the aftershocks of a 2009 crackdown that crashed registrations 75% overnight.

March 23, 2026 23 min read

The Netherlands' .nl: 27.8 Million Domains, the Internet's First Country Code, and the Quiet Backbone of Everything

We parsed 27.8 million domains in the .nl namespace from our dataset: ISP reverse-DNS from Ziggo, XS4ALL, and Chello accounts for 28.6% of all entries. The Netherlands — 18 million people — registered the first active country-code domain in 1986, hosts the world's largest Internet exchange, headquarters RIPE NCC, produced the DNS software that powers the global root, and holds the highest ccTLD density per capita among countries with more than 5 million residents. Now the namespace is shrinking for the first time. Inside the infrastructure nation, the hacker culture that built it, and what AI is doing to domain demand.

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