China's top-level domain has now surpassed .net as the web's third most popular top-level and second most popular country-specific domain, according to a study by VeriSign says the Associated Press. VeriSign said that registrations of .cn domains had surged 23% in the first quarter of this year, and tripled year-over-year. China's domain boom is a sign of the country's growing importance on the web and rapidly expanding Internet user base.

The VeriSign report didn't break down domain numbers, but the running total from Germany's DENIC shows that China's .cn domain has about 11.8 million active registrations -- good enough for 3rd place and 230,000 more than fourth place .net domains. Germany's .de extension is in second place, about a quarter million registrations ahead of China, and the grand daddy of all domain extensions, .com, is comfortably in first place with 76.5 million domain registrations.