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Tag: cctlds

  • ICANN To Court: ccTLDs Aren’t Property

    ICANN To Court: ccTLDs Aren’t Property

    ICANN (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) told a U.S. federal court in the District of Columbia, that a ccTLD (country code Top-Level Domain ) can’t be considered property. For this reason, it says, it can’t be attached by plaintiffs in a lawsuit, when they’re trying to obtain assets of countries they say have supported terrorism.

    ICANN General Counsel and Secretary John Jeffrey explained, “We filed a Motion to Quash in the US federal court today, to ensure that the court has the essential information about how the Internet’s domain name system (DNS) works. While we sympathize with what plaintiffs may have endured, ICANN’s role in the domain name system has nothing to do with any property of the countries involved.

    “We explained in our Motion to Quash, that country code Top-Level Domains (ccTLD) are part of a single, global interoperable Internet which ICANN serves to help maintain, he continued. “ccTLD’s are not property, and are not ‘owned’ or ‘possessed’ by anyone including ICANN, and therefore cannot be seized in a lawsuit.”

    The comments come after terrorism victims successfully won lawsuits against Iran, Syria and North Korea. Plaintiffs served ICANN with “writs of attachment” and subpoenas seeking info to help them seize those countries’ ccTLDs in an effort to recover assets from them.

    ccTLDs (and related IP addresses) specifically targeted by the plaintiffs include .IR (Iran), .SY (Syria) and .KP (North Korea). Also being targeted, according to ICANN, are internationalized top-level domains in non-ASCII characters for Iran and Syria.

    ICANN’s filings can be found here. The “Writs of Attachment” can be found here.

    Image via ICANNnews/YouTube

  • Cutts On How Google Views “Sister Sites”

    In the latest “Webmaster Help” video from Google, Matt Cutts takes on the following question:

    Is there any way Google identifies “sister” websites? For example, relationships between eBay.co.uk and eBay.com? Does linking from one to the other taken as paid or unnatural? And I’m strictly talking about good, genuine ccTLDs for businesses?

    “It is the case that we try to interpret as best we can the relationships there are on the web,” he says. “At the same time it’s very helpful if you can tell us a little bit about what your sites are so that we ca return the correct content to users regardless of which country they’re coming from. So let’s look at the spectrum. On one hand, you’ve got ebay.co.uk and ebay.com, and we need to know that those are somehow related, and then on the other hand, we’ve got all the way down to somebody who has a hundred different websites all about medical malpractice or something like that.”

    On the ccTLD case, he adds, “It is the case that we try to figure out that those sites are related, but we are doing the best we can, and if we get a little bit more help, then we can say, ‘Oh, this is a German user. They should get ebay.de or yoursite.de.’ If it’s a French user, they should get the .fr version…that sort of thing. So the best way to help is to use something called hreflang. You can do that inside of a webpage, where you can mark up, ‘Hey, on ebay.com, a French version of this page is over here, and the German version of this page is over here, or if you don’t want to have that in all the different pages on your site, you can also make a sitemap. And you can just say, ‘Okay, over here is one version for a country, here’s another version for a country.’”

    He says doing this is really helpful because Google tries to determine where users are coming from, what their language is, and then show them the best version of your page. If you tell Google what the right versions are, they’re less likely to screw it up.

    He cautions that they might or might not trust links between any given sites on “any given basis.” For the most part, he says, however, that he wouldn’t worry about them being seen as paid or unnatural, because it’s pretty normal.

    He does advise against linking to all versions of the the site in the footer because it looks spammy. I’m pretty sure he’s covered all this before.

    When the sites aren’t about different languages or countries, and you have a bunch of sites, then he says you should be a lot more careful about your linking.

    Image via YouTube

  • Google: Your Various ccTLDs Will Probably Be Fine From The Same IP Address

    Ever wondered if Google would mind if you had multiple ccTLD sites hosted from a single IP address? If you’re afraid they might not take kindly to that, you’re in for some good news. It’s not really that big a deal.

    Google’s Matt Cutts may have just saved you some time and money with this one. He takes on the following submitted question in the latest Webmaster Help video:

    For one customer we have about a dozen individual websites for different countries and languages, with different TLDs under one IP number. Is this okay for Google or do you prefer one IP number per country TLD?

    “In an ideal world, it would be wonderful if you could have, for every different .co.uk, .com, .fr, .de, if you could have a different, separate IP address for each one of those, and have them each placed in the UK, or France, or Germany, or something like that,” says Cutts. “But in general, the main thing is, as long as you have different country code top level domains, we are able to distinguish between them. So it’s definitely not the end of the world if you need to put them all on one IP address. We do take the top-level domain as a very strong indicator.”

    “So if it’s something where it’s a lot of money or it’s a lot of hassle to set that sort of thing up, I wouldn’t worry about it that much,” he adds. “Instead, I’d just go ahead and say, ‘You know what? I’m gonna go ahead and have all of these domains on one IP address, and just let the top-level domain give the hint about what country it’s in. I think it should work pretty well either way.”

    While on the subject, you might want to listen to what Cutts had to say about location and ccTLDs earlier this year in another video.

  • Google Talks Geotargeting And Generic ccTLDs

    Google’s latest Webmaster Help video deals with ccTLDs and geotargeting – specifically Google’s view of a developer grabbing a ccTLD that is generally associated with a country they’re not actually in. Here’s the exact question:

    As memorable .COM domains become more expensive, more developers are choosing alternate new domains like .IO and .IM – which Google geotargets to small areas. Do you discourage this activity?

    “I want you to go in with your eyes open,” Google’s Matt Cutts responds. “Because you can pick any domain you want, but if you pick a domain like .ES or .IT because you think you can make a novelty domain like GOOGLE.IT (‘Google It’), you know, or something like that, be aware that most domains at a country level do pertain to that specific country, and so we think that that content is going to be intended mainly for that country.”

    He does note that there are some ccTLDs that are more generic like .IO, which stands for Indian Ocean, but there are “very few” domains that are actually relevant to that. A lot of startups were using it, and it was something that was more applicable to the entire world, he says. For reasons like this, Google periodically reviews the list of ccTLDs, looking for things that are in wider use around the world. This way, it can view sites with these domains as more generic.

    Here’s a list of the domains Google considers generic.

    Cutts talked about this topic in another video earlier this year, specifically responding to the question:

    We have a vanity domain (http://ran.ge) that unfortunately isn’t one of the generic TLDs, which means we can’t set our geographic target in Webmaster Tools. Is there any way to still target our proper location?

    You can see his response to that one here.

    On a semi-related note, last week, WordPress.com started letting users register .CO domains.

  • Google Updates Indexing To Treat TLDs Differently

    Google has been updating its indexing systems to treat some TLDs differently than in the past. Some country-code TLDs are being treated as generic TLDs.

    The list, which may still change more over time, of generic country code TLDs is as follows: .ad, .as, .bz, .cc, .cd, .co, .dj, .fm, .gg, .io, .la, .me, .ms, .nu, .sc, .sr, .su, .tv, .tk and .ws.

    Google’s Pierre Far shared the news in a Google+ post (via Search Engine Roundtable).

    Pierre Far

    Pierre Far1 day ago

    Expanded list of ccTLDs treated as Generic ccTLDs

    Over the past few months, we've been updating our indexing systems to treat certain country country-code TLDs as generic TLDs; that is, even though the top-level domain has a country code, we would treat it, by default, as not targeting a specific country. Now that all the pieces are in place, we also updated our Help Center article listing the TLDs we treat as gTLDs:

    http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1347922

    The latest addition includes the quite-popular (and personal favorite 🙂 ) .io.

    Geotargetable domains – Webmaster Tools Help
    Generic top-level domains (gTLDs) don’t target specific countries. If your site has a generic top-level domain, such as .com, .org, or any of the domains listed below, and targets users in a particula… 20    0 Powered by socialditto

    Google’s Matt Cutts recently did a Webmaster Help video discussing location and ccTLDs. If you’re reading this article, you might find it helpful. You can get the gist of it in text if you click the link, in case you don’t feel like sitting through the two-and-a-half-minute video.

  • Matt Cutts Talks Location And ccTLDs

    In Google’s latest Webmaster Help video, Matt Cutts discusses location and ccTLDs. Specifically, he responds to the following user-submitted question:

    We have a vanity domain (http://ran.ge) that unfortunately isn’t one of the generic TLDs, which means we can’t set our geographic target in Webmaster Tools. Is there any way to still target our proper location?

    “We’ve seen this trend – as the domain name space gets a little more exhausted in .com, people get creative, and so Matt Mullenweg at WordPress grabbed ma.tt, for example, which is a really creative URL, but something that people don’t think about is: what is .tt? Or what is .ge?” says Cutts. “It’s Georgia, you know, there’s a lot of startups that have been using .io, which is the TLD for the Indian Ocean, I believe. So you have to think hard about is it the case that this is going to be known as an international area? If your’e just using .es because you can find some cool word that ends in .es, most people using that domain are targeting Spain. So that is our assumption – that you’re targeting Spain.”

    He says that some people want .li to be associated with Long Island, but it’s really associated with Lichtenstein, and that’s how Google views it.

    “In some sense, it comes down to a little bit of a call about when a domain becomes truly generic. When it becomes appropriate for the entire world. So .co, which used to be, I think, Columbia, might be more generic now, where everybody’s using it as if it is another .com, but some domains, I would put some thought into. Just because it’s a cool URL, a lot of the times we’re going to be looking at it and thinking, ‘Hmm, this is actually related more to Lichtenstein that it is to Long Island, and so even though people want to do a Long Island business, we’re more likely to think that it’s in Lichtenstein.”

    He goes on to suggest that you post on Webmaster forums and “rally your case,” and do a blog post that says, “.iO is mostly startups, and this should not be related to this country…” Still, he says, Google has to look at the data and look at the domains that are in use, and make a judgment call.

  • Google Apps Now Offers 30 TLDs (Including ccTLDs)

    Google announced today that Google Apps now offers 30 top-level domain options, including 22 country code TLDs (ccTLDs). Google has partnered with domaindiscount24.com to offer them.

    “A country code top-level domain (ccTLD) such as .com.es or .jp helps companies build a local footprint on the web, and ccTLD support is one of the most-requested features for Google Apps,” said Hugues Vincent from the Google Apps team in a blog post.

    “Now, businesses that wish to sign up for Google Apps but don’t yet have a domain name have plenty of local options to choose from during sign-up,” says Vincent. “Your new domain comes configured with all Google Apps services, including Gmail for your custom email addresses (@yourcompany.com).”

    The following TLDs will be available to those who sign up for Google Apps:

    Google Apps Tlds

    The domains, obviously, will be registered with domaindiscount24.com. Prices for the TLDs start at $8 per year.

    In other Google Apps news, the company gave an update this week on the transition from Postini to Google Apps, which should be complete by the end of next year. More on that here.