ccTLDs and gTLDs - Some further background

byK4Karen

266 followers

8 years ago

Following TopAchiever's excellent blog on ICANN earlier which talked about ccTLDs and gTLDs, I realised that this is a subject I know a bit about, so thought I would add my 2 cents.

ccTLDs

ccTLDs are always 2 letters in length and are derived from the ISO Alpha2 country code in most cases. I say most cases as the ALPHA2 country code for the UK is GB, but the United Kingdom asked ICANN for special permission to use .uk instead.

Not every country has it's own ccTLD, but those that don't are entitled to apply to ICANN for one. Most ccTLDs are considered to be a national asset and are operated by a Government department.

A lot of ccTLDs have restrictive policies that mean that you need to prove yourself to be a resident of that country to own a domain. However, as ccTLDs are at liberty to decide their own registration polices, some have decided to try and monetise their ccTLDs and have opened them up and now promote them to a wider market like .me (Montenegro), .co (Columbia) and .la (Laos).

Legacy gTLDs

In addition to ccTLDs, there are a group of "legacy" Generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs) which are 3 letters long (.com, .org. gov, .mil etc) and have been around for many years. These are not country specific, but were designed to denote the type of domain, i.e., com = commercial, org = not-for-profit, gov = governmental organisations, .mil = military, etc, although the rules on these kind of got relaxed as time went on and now don't mean an awful lot.

New gTLDs

Over the years, ICANN has dipped its toes into the water and delegated some new generic top level domains. Between 2000 and 2006-ish a bunch of new kids on the block were released including .biz, .info, .tel, .mobi etc.

But the game really changed in 2012 when the ICANN board voted to lift some of the restrictions and invited applications from anyone who wanted to try their hand at owning and operating their own top level domain. I make it sound easy...the application process and ICANN's due diligence was rigorous. They were after all, allowing hitherto unknown parties into the hallowed sanctum of the internet's root zone, so you had to prove that you were technically and operationally competent, and have a big fat bank balance. (The application fee alone was US$185k, and that's before you factor in the registry set up and marketing costs.

Anyway, as of today, there over a thousand new top level domains to choose from. Some are geographic, (.nyc, .berlin, .wales, .scot, London), some are restricted, (.bank, .law, .insurance, .reit), some belong to large corporate brands, (.barclays, .bbc, .bentley, .deloitte, or .symantec), but most are open generics and cover a wide variety of interests and sectors.

The upshot is that if you're a hairdresser, you can have a .hair or a .salon, if you're into cycling you can have a .bike or if you're into football, you can have a .football or .soccer. The possibilities are seemingly endless.

Applications for this round closed in 2012, but ICANN are planning a further release of new names in the next few years, so the choices will be even greater.

If you want to see the full list of domains that have been delegated (ccTLDs and gTLDs), you can check the IANA root-zone database here http://www.iana.org/domains/root/db

What about Google rankings and SEO for new gTLDs?

The introduction of new gTLDs has been a big change and adoption levels have been relatively low so far, probably because there hasn't been much in the way of education and awareness outreach. Most people I speak to aren't even aware of the program.

Initially, there was much speculation about how Google would treat new gTLDs, but they have repeatedly said that they are ranked in exactly the same way as the existing generics (.com, .org etc). Not really surprising since they now own several new gTLDs themselves.

But they have been a bit more cagey about what happens if you migrate from existing .com that you've invested lots of SEO time and effort into, to a new gTLD. They have produced document to support site moves but this uncertainty, I'm sure is putting people off and is no doubt contributing to the poor uptake.