Which domain name was registered first? Which domain is the longest and which is the shortest? How much is the most expensive domain name? How many domains are there in total? You can find the answers to all these questions in our brand new post!
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A long time ago…
The domain name system was invented by Paul Mockapetris in 1983, over 35 years ago. It was proposed as an alternative to the IP address naming system, as it is much easier to remember a few words or phrases than a few large numbers!
Interestingly, domain registration was entirely free for the first ten years. In 1995 (after the introduction of domain fees), the price was set at $100 per name registration, and this price tag rapidly reduced as time went on.
The oldest domain in the world
Now we’ve learned a little about the history of domains, you’re probably wondering, what domain existed first? Back in 1985, there were only five domains, and symbolics.com was the first to be registered on March 15, 1985. Today there are millions of domains and billions of Internet users.
The most expensive domain
There are many domains on the Internet — over 335 million! But which one is the most expensive in the world? These records are sometimes broken, but today lasvegas.com is the current winner — it sold for a record $90 million.
The second and third place on the podium for the most expensive domain goes to carinsurance.com ($49,700,000) and insure.com ($35,600,000).
Record buyer
We all love a domain search now and then. But did you know the record for the most domains purchased in one day? This record was set in 2012 by a man named Mike Mann, who registered 14,962 domains in a day Mann said he dreams of taking over the world (at least the virtual one).
Domainer Mike Mann, 45, lives in Delaware and has been in the business since the late 90s. In 1998, he founded BuyDomains (later renamed NameMedia) and sold names on the secondary market.
Mike’s success stemmed from the fact that he started using a particular program that analyzed promising keywords in search queries and compiled a list of potentially successful domain names. Then Mike would start putting together a final list of domains for a low-cost purchase, and later for a big sale.
Thanks to this system, by 2020, the domainer owns 250,000 domains. In Mike’s collection, you can also find great domain names like seo.com, tasty.com, and rip.org.
Mike Mann is also the author of Make Millions and Make Change, in which he shared his experience of making money in small businesses.
A living legend — the mighty .COM
The most demanded zone in the world is .com. It is one of the first top-level domains in existence since January 1985. The US Department of Defense initially ran it, but soon the domain was transferred to SRI International.
The .com zone was originally created to provide addresses for commercial companies, but now it can be used by anyone, and for any purpose.
The longest domain
According to the rules of the domain zone, the length of a domain should not exceed 63 characters. In this case, the maximum number of levels of subdomains in one domain can be up to 127 characters. The maximum number of characters in each of the subdomains is also 63, but the length of the fully qualified domain name must not exceed 255 characters.
In fact, there are many domains of 63 characters on the Web. One of them is 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592.eu that belongs to mathematician Gerard Steffens.
A slightly shorter (58 characters) domain is llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.com. It was registered on October 21, 1999, for the site of a village outside Wales. The village was formerly known as Llanfair Pwllgwyngyll. But to attract tourists, it was renamed, and the name grew to its current monstrous size (a repeat to everyone who tries to read it aloud) — Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.
The shortest domain
In general, in most zones, the minimum number of characters in a domain name is two. Despite this, there is still a short (that is, one-character) domain and not even one. But today, it is not always possible to register such a domain. The fact is that the registration of single-character domains has been prohibited since 1993. However, there are still domains registered before this ban (q.com, x.com, z.com, i.net, q.net, and x.org).
Understanding the value of single-character domains today, registries are meeting user needs and in some zones, it is possible to register single-character domains again. For example, such an opportunity was provided by the national zone of Singapore .sg, Colombia .co, Palestine .ps, domain zones. Of course, such domains are in demand and belong to the expensive premium category in the primary and secondary markets.
The most popular words
According to VeriSign, there are three popular words used in domain zones. They are:
- “Home” – 1.2 million uses
- “Online” – 1 million uses
- “Land” – 900 thousand uses
But tops for non-English countries differ. For example, recently it was analyzed which domains are registered by legal entities in Russia. It is interesting that if you look at the database of legal entities’ names, the most popular words will be “plus” and “service”. The same trend has been reflected in domain registration since 2010, although the leading words among domain names are “pro,” “group,” “shop,” “dom,” and “auto”.
By the way, TLD .?? is the world’s first Cyrillic domain zone. The first domain names in the zone were president.rf and government.rf.
Which fact surprised you the most? Or maybe you know unusual stories about domains or domain zones? Let us know in the comments!
