Domains

The Domain Name System (DNS) translates domain names into IP addresses (and vice versa), so it’s crucial for the uptime of domains and services. But how can a DNS influence uptime? And what’s the most commonly used managed DNS provider these days?

The top managed DNS providers on the web

domains

Web trends

Tech news

Tech

What do you type in your browser: a hostname, a domain or a website? And what’s the difference between these? In the first part of our brand new series, Internet Basics, we shed light on the structure of web addresses.

Internet Basics Series #1: Web addresses explained

Internet Basics Series

How are new gTLDs used and how much traffic do they attract? We dived into our data and made some interesting discoveries.

Beyond registration numbers: how popular are new generic TLDs?

TLDs

Registrars

Public Sector

Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 is a humanitarian tragedy and has wide reaching global economic effects. In this article we take a deeper look at what is happening on the web. Specifically, we track Russian business websites, look at some of the main countries where these sites are hosted and how the war has reshuffled some of these connections. 

Using structured web data to track the movement of Russian business sites

Policy-making

Asset Management

ESG stands for Environmental, Social and Governance, and represents criteria based on which companies can be evaluated for investment decisions beyond financial factors. Companies often produce ESG reports for investors that care about how the company addresses topics of sustainability, diversity and management among others. Investors increasingly seek to invest in companies that report and make progress on these issues.

A quick way to monitor ESG reporting on the web

Investing & reporting

Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden have some of the most well-developed digital infrastructure worldwide. In the most recent analysis of the European Commission's Digital and Society Index (DESI), Finland, Denmark and Sweden occupy three of the top four spots demonstrating that they are among the most advanced digitally. Here, we analyze what the internet reveals about business and eCommerce in the four Nordic countries.

An overview of Nordic business and eCommerce sites

Security

The ports we are discussing in this post are virtual (software based) places where network connections start and end. All communication that happens over the internet is exchanged via ports.

What you need to know about open ports to protect your business

Cybersecurity

Software

In 2014 geographical top-level domains (TLDs) were introduced to enable the association between a domain and a geographical, geopolitical or ethnic community. GeoTLDs comprise geographically diverse areas including islands (e.g., .corsica), cities (e.g., .doha), federal states (e.g., .nrw) and even entire continents (.africa).

Exploring cityTLDs: Adventures of online travel

Clickjacking tricks a user into performing an action they don’t intend to carry out such as clicking on a disguised webpage element. As a result, the user may enter a fake but similar looking website, have his personal information stolen through fake text boxes on top of the real ones or unintentionally spread malware, worms or scams.

What is clickjacking and how can you prevent it?

GDPR

Data privacy

What is DNS and what does it do? Let’s find out what the most commonly used DNS name server is according to our data.

Most commonly used DNS name servers on the internet

A common problem in the online advertizing world is domain spoofing. Placing an ads.txt file on your website is a simple and effective solution to prevent this. Find out what ads.txt is and how you can use it to prevent ad fraud in this Insights article.

What is ads.txt and why is it important?

Technology detection

The domain extension .com, operated by Verisign (Nasdaq: VRSN) which also runs .net, is without doubt the largest and most well-known top-level domain (TLD), comprising more than 160 million websites.

A comprehensive overview of the .com top-level domain

.com

Community

Dataprovider.com Insights is live, the place you find data intelligence that is relevant to your industry. We structure the largest source of unstructured data and it would almost feel like a crime not to share some of the insights we get from our data.

Dataprovider.com Insights is live!

Announcement

How many WordPress sites are vulnerable to security risks? Every month, we index all domains on the web and detect content management systems (CMSs) on websites. Companies all over the world use a CMS to create, store and manage content on their websites.

Outdated WordPress versions and security vulnerabilities

WordPress

Not all domains have a website. Christian, one of our co-founders, shares insights into the landscape and ideas on how to ensure high renewal rates.

Domains that don't have a website yet

Domain series

Seven short interviews with some of the amazing women at Dataprovider.com are in the spotlight today. Needless to say, we’re celebrating all women in our team: Edine, Jeanine, Lucia, Maaike, Marjolein, Andreea and Andriana.

Celebrating women at Dataprovider.com II

People

Recently, Austria’s data protection watchdog reported that the use of Google Analytics is a breach of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The watchdog found that there weren’t enough safeguards put into place to protect users from being identified. 

Data privacy and web analytics tools across Europe

Prof. Dr. Michael D. König explains how he used web data from Dataprovider.com to research how companies were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

How were companies affected during the COVID-19 pandemic?

COVID-19

Rebranding, a bucket of bad news and plummeting stocks. A lot is happening around Facebook. What can our web data tell us about the social media platform owned by Meta? Has Facebook reached its peak?

Has Facebook reached its peak?

News

A country code top-level domain (ccTLD) usually refers to a two-letter top-level domain assigned to a country, sovereign state or a dependent territory. As an example, the letters .nl have been reserved for the Netherlands, indicating that a website is most likely Dutch. 

How many ccTLDs are hosted in their own country?

A lesser-known product of Dataprovider.com is Reverse DNS Lookup. What is it and how can you leverage it? 

Reverse DNS Lookup for investment managers and security professionals

How to

Yandex is the Google of Russia. They also have a Google analytics alternative that can help you understand how many visitors come to your website. 

The problem with Russian Yandex trackers on European and American websites

Seven short interviews with some of the amazing women at Dataprovider.com are in the spotlight today. Needless to say, we’re celebrating each and every one of them, including those who aren’t featured in this story: Samantha, Jeanine, Andriana and Andreea. 

Celebrating women at Dataprovider.com I

 Improve the security and email delivery of domains

Domains that use email and SPF

Brand Protection

Your corporate portfolio probably contains thousands of domain names. How can you ensure they’re always protected?

How to use web data in your online brand protection strategy?

In early March, contractors working for Google to translate texts for the Russian market received an update: “Effective immediately, the ongoing Russian war against Ukraine could no longer be referred to as a war but rather only vaguely as ‘extraordinary circumstances.’" 

Can we monitor how Russian censorship is spreading on the web?

NFT domains like .ETH are domains that live in the blockchain. They are neither part of ICANN nor of the domain name system or DNS. Google and Bing don’t index these and the most used browsers don’t support them, although there are workarounds like using an extension. 

What to do with NFT (Web3) domains?

As a registrar, how do you gain insights into what is happening on newly registered domains during the first three months after the registration? How do you keep track if the thousands of domains that have been registered remain placeholders or create online stores that need an SSL certificate?

How do you monitor what’s happening on newly registered domains?

Phishing attacks and email spam are among the most common methods cyber criminals use to get inside a network. If a single employee clicks on a malicious email attachment, ransomware and viruses can get installed and harvest your sensitive information. 

How SPF and DMARC can help against Spam and Phishing attacks

What type of websites need to have an SSL certificate and why is it crucial for the security of your website?

Online stores and websites with privacy sensitive data

Since social media platforms can help companies connect with their customers, increase brand awareness or boost leads and sales, can we assume that all companies with a website would also use social media?

Do most companies mention their social media profiles on their website?

Fact Checking with Chris

With the introduction of governmental enforced lockdowns and the ensuing restrictions all over the world, people and businesses have adopted various communications tools for adapting to the COVID-19 pandemic.

How is COVID-19 driving tech adoption?

If you have a domain name, you will probably also use it to send emails. As a domain name owner, you can prevent criminals from misusing your domain for sending phishing or spam by using a simple framework called SPF.

Is the majority of companies protected against phishing and spam?

Online shopping has seen a huge growth as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic as consumers adopted online shopping as a convenient and safe way to make purchases. For e-commerce sites to be attractive, they should offer a wide range of payment methods. But what are the most popular payment methods offered online globally?

What are the top 10 payment methods used on the web?

Is there a shift from in-person to online shopping? Can we see this in the number of online shops that also have a physical location? Let's find out in this "Fact Checking With Chris."

Do most online stores have a physical store as well?

Websites often use embedded maps for various purposes. For instance, they show where a store is located or provide you with the specific route. 

Which map technology is most used on the internet?

Our spider currently recognizes more than 50 unique advertising (ad) networks, so we got curious: which are the top 3?

Which are the most popular ad networks?

We're monitoring all unique .ru top-level domains and we're wondering: can Russia be disconnected from the web?

How is the Russian web responding to the conflict?

Hackers can take advantage of vulnerabilities when your website is running on an old PHP version. PHP is a widely-used open source scripting language that is especially suited for web development. Many companies use PHP as a scripting language for their website.

Security problems with old PHP versions

On 15 March, OpenSSL published that versions 1.0.2, 1.1.1, 3.0.0 and 3.0.1 contain a vulnerability of high severity. The vulnerability, also known as CVE-2022-0778, creates the possibility of starting Denial-of-Service attacks on clients and TLS servers. According to our data, there are currently 1,607,496 domains that are using OpenSSL.

How big is the impact of the OpenSSL vulnerability on the web?

OpenSSL

Placeholders are temporary web pages that are generated by the hosting company or registrar of the domain. A placeholder usually indicates that a permanent website is being created. But how many placeholders actually convert to a permanent site?

Where have all the placeholders gone?

Placeholders

We wonder: is Bitcoin a way to store value similar to how gold can be used? Or is it also becoming an acceptable payment method? Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency, the currency has been in use since 2009, and has had a volatile trading history. 

Is Bitcoin a popular payment method?

Bitcoin

Cryptocurrencies

Which are the top 3 live chat software solutions on the web? Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, consumers are interacting more and more with businesses online.

The use of live chat solutions on the web

As the COVID-19 pandemic has taken over the world, so has misinformation. The pandemic has led to an overabundance of inaccurate information and conspiracy theories: from sources claiming they offer treatments and miracle cures to outlets deliberately spreading false information to sway public opinion.

Uncovering networks of websites spreading misinformation about COVID-19

Since the introduction of the GDPR privacy and security law by the European Union (EU) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), a lot of companies have started to mention on their websites how they’re dealing with these laws. 

How many websites disclose their GDPR or other privacy laws?

In a previous blog post, we discussed the largest DNS name servers and their role on the web. In this post, we're going to dive into managed DNS providers. A managed DNS provider, also called a premium DNS provider or authoritative DNS, has various systems in place to ensure the highest possible uptime and security, such as DNS load balancing, monitoring and alarm systems. These guarantee that the DNS can resolve IP addresses and domains. Sometimes, large companies use their own DNS solution, often with a self-managed fallback system.

At Dataprovider.com we store this DNS information: in particular, we can see which domain uses what DNS provider. Using this information we can identify the top managed DNS providers by instalment base.

The top managed DNS providers are Amazon Route 53, NS1 and Microsoft Azure. We don’t include CloudFlare and Google Cloud DNS because they keep enterprise and free clients on the same domain, which makes it difficult to separate premium customers. You can see a large spread between the sole managed providers and how big their install bases are. But this doesn’t necessarily mean that the company as a whole is smaller. There are numerous factors that play a role in this. For example: what customers do they actually have and how big are those customers? 

We’ve picked six companies that are also listed on the NASDAQ to see which DNS provider they’re using for their principal domain. Not surprisingly, you’ll find that Google manages its own DNS infrastructure. Amazon.com uses Oracle Dyn but at the same time also provides its own DNS service called Amazon Route 53. Among some of its customers are Zoom, Reddit and many more. Semiconductor producer Nvidia makes use of NS1, an American DNS provider. And Tesla makes use of Akamai’s Edge DNS product.

Managed DNS providers are important because they can offer better security and performance, which is important for larger domains that generate a lot of traffic. Here, we’ve identified some of the largest Premium DNS services by a number of installments. However, the number of installments alone doesn’t necessarily say much about the size or revenue of that company. In order to decide if a managed DNS provider is necessary and which one is best for your business, individual security and performance requirements need to be determined.

Check out our relevant Recipes for a better understanding of the trends and more in-depth analytics.

Learn more about the largest managed DNS providers on the web. At Dataprovider.com, we can see which domain uses what DNS provider.

The top managed DNS providers on the web

Industries