Archive for the ‘ccTLDs’ Category
Targeted a specific country? Get your ccTLD.
It’s no secret that Google uses several factors to determine where a web site is “located” and thus determine its relevance to each individual searcher. But there has been a lot of debate about which factors are most important.
The two I hear mostly commonly are if the domain has a particular country code domain name and where the web host is.
Now Google search-spam czar Matt Cutts has laid it out on the table.
One person asked a question that we forgot to make a video for: “Can you list in order of importance the things that make a site to be seen by google as a site from a particular country?” Since we didn’t make it as a video, here’s the answer as a quick bonus:
1. country code TLD (ccTLD) such as .de or .fr
2. geotargeting in the webmaster console
3. IP address
There may be other signals, but those are the biggies and the order that I’d put them in.
What those “other signals” are is unclear. Perhaps the whois information matters. But Cutt’s response verifies that the most important thing in determining what country your web site is in is the country code top level domain name. Many people also know that IDNs are good for targeted a specific language.
© DomainNameWire.com 2010.
Review and rate domain name parking companies at Parking Judge.
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No surprise: .cn falls.
It should really come as no surprise. As I predicted a couple months ago, China’s crackdown on the .cn domain name has led to a precipitous drop in the number of registered .cn domain names.
Data from HosterStats.com shows that the registered base of .cn domain names has dropped 39% in the first four months of the year, from 13,459,133 at the end of 2009 to just 8,254,681 at the end of April 2010.
The drop is due to a number of changes by China in how the .cn domain is administered. Primarily this is a crackdown on ownership, requiring each registrant to provide significant documentation in order to retain their .cn domain. The domain was even shut to new registrations by non-Chinese registrars for awhile. The changes caused big registrars, including GoDaddy, to drop the domain.
Another factor leading to the decline is the end of promotional pricing. For a while .cn was available for 1 yuan. This low price led to a lot of the problems that caused China to crack down on how the domain was being used.
HosterStats.com points out that .Cn has now fallen to the third largest ccTLD behind .de and now .uk.
© DomainNameWire.com 2010.
Review and rate domain name parking companies at Parking Judge.
Related posts:
- China May Re-Open Individual Registration of .Cn Domain Names
- Report: China Halts Overseas Registrars from Registering .CN Domains
- 11% of .Net Domains Aren’t Registered in .Com
American Express gets into .me UDRP game, Samsung starts collecting ccTLDs.
American Express has joined a list of companies to use domain name arbitration to get their .me domain names. The company filed a complaint with WIPO for AmericanExpress.me, which is owned by a New Jersey resident. The domain currently has a GoDaddy parking page. First ad? “American Express® Cards”.
Other companies/brands to get their corresponding .me domain names through UDRP include Overstock, Mozilla, Firefox, ExxonMobil, Sprite, and Porsche.
In other UDRP news, Samsung is starting to get results from a slew of UDRPs it filed for country code domain names a couple months ago. So far it has picked up Samsung.cd (Congo), Samsung.la (Laos), and Samsung.md (Moldova). It has cases pending for Samsung.nu, .nu, .as, .com.ve, .bz, and .tm.
© DomainNameWire.com 2009.
Review and rate domain name parking companies at Parking Judge.
Related posts:
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- PetMed Express Loses Domain Dispute
- Big Companies Go After .Mobi Domain Names