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.tk passes 25 million domains
Kevin Murphy,
July 21, 2014, 12:25:06 (UTC),
Domain Registries
The .tk registry has become only the second TLD to pass 25 million domain names.
Netherlands-based Dot TK passed the milestone at the weekend, according to statistics posted on its web site, and today has 25,068,128 domains under management.
It’s grown by a whopping 837,703 names in the last 30 days alone.
That means Tokelau, the tiny island nation the ccTLD represents, has a nominal 17,900 domains per citizen.
The reason for the huge numbers is that .tk names are usually free to register anywhere in the world, with Dot TK using a freemium model through which it only makes money from add-on services.
.tk became the largest ccTLD last year, hitting 16.7 million names in April 2013 and passing Germany’s .de, which today has about 15.7 million domains under management.
Being free, you’d expect there to be a disproportionate amount of nefarious activity in .tk, but that does not appear to be the case any more.
The TLD doesn’t show up in the top 10 most abused TLDs in the most recent report of the Anti-Phishing Working Group (pdf).
Architelos says (pdf) it’s the 47th-safest out of 72 TLDs, scoring it better than .com, .net, .co and many other popular TLDs.
No registry grows at that rate… not even if they are free.
Has anyone done any analysis of the registrant(s)?
Not to my knowledge. I don’t think the registry publishes its zone files, so it might be tricky to get a list of registered names.
.tk has provided integration for hosting providers. If some hosting providers changed their free at signup sub-domain (client.hostingcompany.net) to a free .tk domain, that would provide for accelerated domain registrations since it would be a zero effort to the registrant.
Note that .tk doesn’t require the registration terms, including consent, that gTLDs do.