Small Island Dominates World Domains

Tokelau, a small island in the South Pacific with a population of 1 400, has 31.3 million .tk domains registered, making it the world's largest country-code domain.

The next two domains are .cn (China) with 16.8 million and .de (Germany) with 16 million.

This is according to a map produced by .uk domain registry, Nominet, which visualised the world according to domain registration.

The small country has such a large number of domains because of an unusual operating model, where countries partner with international domain registrar Freenom to offer free registrations of its domain.

Once these free domains have been abandoned and are no longer in use, adverts are placed on the pages and a portion of the revenue goes to partner countries. According to some reports, one-sixth of Tokelau's GDP comes from .tk domains.

Other countries in this partnership include Mali (.ml), Gabon (.ga), Equatorial Guinea (.gq) and the Central African Republic (.cf).

Another anomaly on the domain map is the US, which is very small compared to the rest of the world.

"Despite having high levels of Internet use, e-commerce and online innovation, there are comparatively few registrations under .us," says Nominet CEO Russell Haworth.

"Americans and American businesses tend to prefer .com, which at around 123 million registrations is the world's most common domain.

"But the low number of .us domains instead reflects American dominance in the Internet's formative years. A .com Web site may be assumed to be American by default, removing the need to specify."

Besides the US and Tokelau, the number of country-code domain registrations can be used as an indicator of Internet adoption in the country.

"Online Europe is so much larger than geographic Europe because of the high rates of Internet adoption by countries in this region," said Haworth.

"The UK, for example, is only the 21st largest country in the world by population, and the 78th by area. But in terms of Internet use, it's right at the top of the table.

"In 2015, about four out of five UK adults accessed the Internet daily, and more than three-quarters bought goods or services online."

However, Howarth also says the map suggests "global inequality offline can often be mirrored by a lack of opportunity and representation in the online world".

"The continent of Africa is home to more than one billion people, yet on our map it's much, much smaller than it should be."