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Innovation

Why one tiny island is still a domain name giant

There's a million more .tk domains than China's .cn.
Written by Liam Tung, Contributing Writer

The small Pacific island Tokelau is still the most populated country-level domain in the world, outnumbering the 20.8 million domains that use China's .cn. 

UK registry for .uk domains has published its latest topsy-turvy map of the world, with land mass weighted according to the number of registered country-level domains. 

As it was two years ago, Tokelau remains the world's 'largest' country, thanks to its free registration policy; the number of .tk domains reaching nine million in 2012 and from there tripling to 31 million by 2016. Today, the number of .tk domains stands at 21.2 million, but it still remains the largest, just ahead of China. 

The number of domains with China's .cn has increased over the past two years from 17 million to 20.8 million, making it the second most widely used country-level domain in the world.      

Germany's .de is now the third most widely used country-level domain, followed by the UK's .uk. 

Another outlier is Anguilla's .ai, which has grown 219 percent since last year, likely due to companies promoting artificial intelligence capabilities. 

Nominet today counts 153.2 million country code domain names, up from 143.6 million in 2017. 

The US's .us domain registrations has declined by 17 percent over the past year, likely because .com already implies the US. In contrast, the growth in the number of African domains has doubled since 2017. 

Meanwhile, locked down North Korea now has a record 29 registered domains with the .kp country domain. Five new .kp domains were registered last year.

Kuwait's .kw was the fastest growing country level domain, increasing 16080 percent last year. However, it started with a small base, with only 4,020 new domains added. 

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