VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN), today announced that 4 million domain names were added to the Internet in the fourth quarter of 2014, bringing the total number of registered domain names to 288 million worldwide across all top-level domains (TLDs) as of Dec. 31, 2014 in the domain industry report.

The increase of four million domain names globally equates to a growth rate of 1.3 % over the third quarter of 2014. Worldwide registrations have grown by 16.9 million, or 6.2%, year over year.

The .com and .net TLDs experienced aggregate growth in the fourth quarter of 2014, reaching a combined total of approximately 130.6 million domain names in the domain name base for .com and .net, representing a 2.7% increase year over year.

As of Dec. 31, 2014, the base of registered names in .com equaled 115.6 million names, while .net equaled 15.0 million names.

New .com and .net registrations totaled 8.2 million during the fourth quarter of 2014.

In the fourth quarter of 2013, new .com and .net registrations totaled 8.2 million.