UK hosts more domain names than China

HosterStats.com reported on Thursday that more domain names were registered with the UK's country code at the end of April than domains registered with China's code, ThinQ.co.uk relays.

The breakdown for the end of the month showed 8,483,010 .uk domain codes to 8,254,681 .cn codes. The shift is due less to a growth of UK domain registrations, but rather to a massive slowing of China domain applicants. Since the beginning of 2010, UK domains have grown by a few hundred thousands, but Chinese domains have decreased by four million.

ThinQ believes the drop is due to fewer cheap registration offers and better enforced security. CNNIC, the body that runs the country code service, now requires photo IDs before a user can register a domain. Thus, hosting services that had simply passed along registered domains to users on behalf of CNNIC can no longer do this without the parent company's consent.

The UK currently possesses the second-largest database of country codes, trailing Germany's reported 13.6 million registrations, ThinQ reports. The Office for National Statistics states that 70 percent of UK households had access to the internet during 2009.