What are the Most Popular TLDs? [Answered]

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Most Popular Tlds
Most Popular Tlds

.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.

Alexa Top 1 Million TLD Frequency

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.

Search “site:.edu” on Google

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.

moz top 500

Frequency of Domains Among Moz Top 500

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.

Ahrefs Top 1 Million Frequency 

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:

top 20 gtlds of 2020

Namecheap’s Top 20 Generic TLDs

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.

registered domain names by tld

Registered Domain Names by TLD

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

I'm an entrepreneur who loves software and technology. Read some articles if you're interested about both.

7 COMMENTS

  1. As we can see many professional are moving towards .io. What do you think about .io? means can it replace big guns i.e. .com or .net in near future?.

    • I don’t think .com will ever be fully replaced due to the historical significance, but .io is getting pretty popular. With the new .dev coming out, it’s covering a similar customer demographic too.

    • Personally I really dislike .co because it’s confusingly similar to .com

      If you can’t get the .com i’d suggest something that is very different but clear enough.

      For a purely SEO based site, you can even get a TLD with a keyword, for example: .agency for am marketing agency site.

  2. Within a decade, the tld will not matter. The value of having a .com, .net, .org will be no different than a .top, .xyz, etc…

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