What are the Most Popular TLDs? [Answered]

.com is still the most popular TLD in 2021. New TLDs like .xyz and .club and .pro are becoming more popular according to alexa rankings. Despite the growth, .net .org and other traditionally “2nd tier” domain extensions are still more than two times as popular as these new names.

Note: TLD means “top level domain” that’s the .com part you see at the end of a website. For example the TLD of hayksaakian.com is the .com part. It’s not always so simple, in the UK with a website like dailymail.co.uk their TLD is .co.uk.

TLD Popularity by Alexa Top 1 Million Ranking [2018]

Alexa is one of the most popular measures of website popularity. Alexa provides a list of the top 1 million websites via this URL:

Source URL: http://s3.amazonaws.com/alexa-static/top-1m.csv.zip

I analyzed the top million websites to see which top level domains were the most common.

Country specific TLDs like .ru .de and .com.br are growing quickly, with .ru actually beating out .net among the world’s most popular 1 million websites.

I found 2142 different top level domains among the Alexa top 1 million. Despite the numerous options, about 48% of the top 1 million were still .com domains.

Top 10 Biggest and Most Frequently Used TLDs in the Alexa 1 million

TLD	Frequency
com	328,427
org	23,269
ru	25,132
net	22,400
de	3,399
com.br	1,017
ir	10,713
co.uk	5,144
pl	1,125
it	1,282
Others	154,201

Clearly there are many more top level domains in this “long tail” of 154 thousand “others”.

Popularity by Google Results

One measure of popularity is numbers of results in Google. You can find these numbers yourself by performing a “site colon” search. For example, “site:.edu” will reveal the number of education specific domains.

I checked the 20 original and historical top level domains and organized them by numbers of search results found in Google. This methodology was originally designed in 2006 by Bill Slawski.

The data provided below was taken on October 2021.

TLD	Results	Description
.com	25,270,000,000	Commercial
.org	6,460,000,000	Noncommercial
.net	6,130,000,000	Network services
.de	3,410,000,000	Germany
.ru	1,760,000,000	Russian Federation
.uk	2,420,000,000	United Kingdom
.jp	2,220,000,000	Japan
.it	3,640,000,000	Italy
.fr	3,780,000,000	France
.nl	1,350,000,000	Netherlands
.ca	1,100,000,000	Canada
.au	1,280,000,000	Australia
.es	1,440,000,000	Spain
.ch	7110,000,000	Switzerland
.edu	911,000,000	US accredited postsecondary institutions
.gov	1,140,000,000	United States Government
.se	1,030,000,000	Sweden
.us	342,000,000	United States
.no	537,000,000	Norway
.mil	15,700,000	United States Military

Most Common TLDs from the Moz top 500 [October 2021]

Moz publishes an updated list of the 500 most authoritative websites on the internet. Find the full list here: https://moz.com/top500

I analyzed their list of 500 websites and measured how often each type of TLD shows up in that list.

This pie chart demonstrates how often each TLD appears.

Staying consistent with every other measure of popularity: 65% of the top sites still use a .com domain extension. Coming in at #2 is the .org TLD with 8.0% of the domains from top sites.

Unlike the Alexa 1 million, the moz list shows a higher share of .edu and .gov domains at the top of the list, at #6 and #3.

TLD Occurence in the Ahrefs top 1 million [2018]

ahrefs is a marketing technology company that is well known for having the deepest database of links after the likes of Google and Bing.

Source [not available now]: https://ahrefs.com/ahrefs-top/

The ahrefs Top 1 million list represents the most powerful websites on the internet, measured specifically by links from other websites. Websites with more links from other websites are ranked higher.

Overall, this list is largely similar to the alexa top 1 million list.

Interestingly, ahrefs has a higher representation of .de domains compared to .ru domains — the reverse of the alexa alist.

Here’s a detailed breakdown of the top 30 TLDs by the numbers

tld	frequency
com	433,856
org	77,551
de	62,222
net	38,518
ru	24,106
co.uk	22,134
nl	18,547
fr	16,944
it	14,189
jp	12,935
cn	11,817
pl	10,904
co.jp	9,654
cz	8,892
com.au	8,660
ch	8,027
se	7,459
com.br	7,448
ca	7,410
eu	7,045
be	6,248
dk	6,036
at	5,992
com.cn	5,898
info	5,709
org.uk	5,365
es	5,342
gov.cn	5,006
fi	3,989
Others	139,427

Let’s Explore What Are The Eight New Top Level Domains Launched by Namecheap in 2020

1. .cyou
2. .miami
3. .so
4. .co.in
5. .gay
6. .contact
7. .new
8. .boston

Namecheap is one of the world’s largest domain registrars.

Since they sell domains, Namecheap has valuable insights on which domains people are purchasing most frequently.

In 2020 they published a report, which revealed, which are the top 20 Generic Top Level Domains of 2020:

Source: The Namecheap Domain Insights and Trends Report:

https://nc-resourcecenter.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/domain-name-trends-2020.pdf

2020 Top Registered Domain Names by TLD

From new top level domains, let’s look at the top registered domain names by TLD.

Surprisingly .cn comes in at #1 with 20.7 million registered domains while .uk comes in at #4 with 11 million, then followed by .org with 10.4 million registered domains.

Most common TLD frequency among Alexa top 1 million websites [2018]

TLD	Frequency
com	477,634
org	46,643
ru	43,142
net	40,671
de	30,082
com.br	20,845
ir	17,181
co.uk	13,100
pl	13,047
it	10,480
com.au	9,094
fr	9,092
info	8,427
in	8,191
cz	8,069
es	6,219
io	6,188
jp	5,628
ro	5,572
nl	5,452
gr	5,421
co	5,419
ca	5,298
eu	4,835
ch	4,788
com.tw	4,508
se	4,028
sk	4,014
hu	3,694
me	3,597
co.za	3,563
no	3,529
tv	3,186
dk	3,172
at	3,126
co.jp	3,072
edu	3,020
be	2,967
cn	2,878
co.kr	2,825
com.ar	2,736
com.ua	2,586
cl	2,503
biz	2,206
xyz	2,127
com.mx	2,097
fi	2,082
us	2,046
vn	2,021
pt	1,890
com.tr	1,872
club	1,827
ie	1,708
pro	1,634
online	1,612
co.in	1,602
ua	1,464
org.uk	1,454
cc	1,437
az	1,388
by	1,297
mx	1,284
tw	1,253
co.il	1,208
gov.in	1,184
com.cn	1,179
kz	1,153
bg	1,138
lt	1,100
site	1,060
su	1,058
hr	1,050
org.br	1,046
gov	1,034
com.pl	985
co.nz	955
si	933
top	871
ac.in	824
com.hk	814
com.sg	796
rs	791
com.co	736
kr	728
co.id	726
pw	707
uz	696
com.my	664
ae	638
nic.in	638
com.vn	620
hk	566
org.au	555
tk	534
lv	529
live	529
to	518
mobi	489
gov.cn	486
ac.uk	479
id	478
org.tw	478
ee	472
or.jp	455
go.id	455
cat	452
or.kr	447
pk	437
sg	432
ws	431
edu.cn	422
ac.ir	422
co.th	415
uk	414
com.ng	400
gob.mx	394
gov.uk	380
news	363
ma	356
ac.id	355
is	351
go.th	350
edu.mx	347
fm	340
in.ua	339
lk	333
edu.br	332
ge	330
xxx	328
am	325
ai	324
my	322
life	312
edu.vn	311
shop	304
space	303
nu	302
edu.in	302
asia	301
com.pk	300
org.ua	298
cf	298
br	295
website	294
lu	294
ml	293
guru	290
pe	288
go.kr	282
today	282
ba	278
icu	276
blog	275
ac.jp	274
ga	268
gov.tr	266
ac.th	263
store	259
ph	258
gov.tw	258
tech	258
edu.co	258
gov.co	257
gov.it	251
com.ph	249
com.pe	246
gov.br	246
gov.bd	246
net.br	246
fun	242
edu.hk	242
ng	240
cloud	236
net.au	234
app	234
gov.my	233
edu.pl	233
org.in	233
host	231
edu.au	226
org.ar	226
gg	225
win	222
edu.pk	218
com.sa	217
gov.au	212
link	212
md	212
one	210
ne.jp	209
com.ve	209
gob.pe	207
media	203
sp.gov.br	202
edu.tr	202
gov.ua	200
gob.ar	199
edu.tw	199
org.tr	194
tn	189
dz	188
kiev.ua	187
edu.ar	186
ac.kr	183
ly	181
travel	180
mk	178
work	175
nhs.uk	173
world	169
la	168
org.cn	167
gov.ar	166
edu.ng	166
org.hk	165
co.ke	162
al	160
edu.pe	160
com.do	157
com.uy	157
in.th	156
video	155
name	151
org.za	148
org.pl	148
gov.pk	146
sa	146
gov.sa	145
mn	143
aero	143
network	143
org.mx	142
vip	138
download	136
net.ua	136
bz	135
mg.gov.br	135
kg	133
global	133
im	132
rocks	132
pr.gov.br	132
edu.my	131
coop	130
gov.vn	130
gov.az	129
gov.hk	129
stream	128
net.pl	127
Others (below this line)	28,050