What are ccTLDs (county code top-level domain names)?

Country code top-level domains or ccTLDs (country code TLDs) are the re­spons­ib­il­ity of the re­spect­ive country. Domain guidelines define which con­di­tions are attached to their re­gis­tra­tion. When you register a suitable ccTLD, you reveal to search engines and users who the intended target audience is.

Examples of ccTLDs

ccTLDs are top-level domains that are always made up of a two-letter code that is assigned to every country according to the 1974 ISO-3166 standard. In addition to these countries, oversea ter­rit­or­ies separated from their mainland coun­ter­parts also receive their own ccTLDs based on the same ISO standard. Following this, in addition to the Aus­trali­an domain, .au, there are also distinct ccTLDs for the country’s distant ter­rit­or­ies of the Coco Islands (.cc), the Christmas Islands (.cx), Norfolk Island (.nf), or the Heard and McDonald Islands (.hm), which are Aus­trali­an outlying ter­rit­or­ies.

There are also two ex­cep­tions that deviate from the standard. These are:

• The United Kingdom uses the ccTLD (.uk), although the ISO domain .gb, while re­gistered, isn’t used.

• Although it’s not a sovereign state (or a dependent territory), the European Union uses the ccTLD, (.eu), thanks to an exemption from the standard protocol.

What are the re­quire­ments for re­gis­ter­ing a ccTLD?

Every country has the right to determine its own guidelines for assigning its domain, which can lead to big dif­fer­ences between countries. In France, for example, anyone wishing to register their .fr domain first needs to have their residency or company headquar­ters located within France in the EU, Iceland, Liecht­en­stein, Norway or Switzer­land. The ccTLD of Canada (.ca) is in turn ex­clus­ively available for companies and in­di­vidu­als domiciled in Canada.

And until 2009, Germany required all .de TLDs to be composed of at least three char­ac­ters, of which at least one had to be a letter. Since the new reg­u­la­tion, one- and two-character addresses as well as addresses con­sist­ing only of digits are now also permitted when re­gis­ter­ing the top-level domain .de.

Many smaller or poorer countries have cap­it­al­ised on these domain as­sign­ment rules by stra­tegic­ally marketing their ccTLDs:

• .to: the ccTLD of the island nation of Tonga has been managed by the domain registry, Tonic, since 1997. The as­sign­ment process takes places auto­mat­ic­ally, re­gard­less of the applicant’s actual residency. In recent years, the domain has been very popular for file sharing as well as other con­tro­ver­sial video services.

• .tv: the mi­cro­state of Tuvala was able to cash in on $50,000,000 (around £40,000,000) when it sold its ccTLD to the company DotTV, which then marketed its purchase as a tele­vi­sion domain. The money went to financing IT in­fra­struc­ture as well as paying the admission fee for the UN. GoDaddy Registry acts as the re­spons­ible registry for this domain.

• .ag: the top-level domain, .ag, is actually for the in­de­pend­ent state of Antigua and Barbuda. It’s also often used by many large German busi­nesses whose legal entities are organised as Ak­tiongesell­schaften, or joint-stock companies.

• .me: Montenegro’s country top-level domain has ex­per­i­enced a massive flood of re­gis­tra­tions since first becoming available in 2008. .me domains, which often take on con­structs like love.me, are often auctioned off upon re­gis­tra­tion. A notable example was seen in 2011 when the domain meet.me was sold for $450,000 (around £370,000).

What are the ad­vant­ages of ccTLDs?

The different domain ex­ten­sions of the in­di­vidu­al countries offer some decisive ad­vant­ages when used in the right context. For example, a ccTLD can have an effect on SEO since search engines can recognise which target market the website is relevant for if the ap­pro­pri­ate ccTLD is used. In the best case, you benefit from a better po­s­i­tion­ing in the search results. The purpose of a ccTLD is to show regional relevance and makes it easier for users to find a suitable website. In addition, many visitors use country-specific domain ex­ten­sions to determine how trust­worthy a website is.

Who is a ccTLD suitable for?

Country code top-level domains are suitable for web projects of various kinds. It is important that the re­spect­ive ccTLD is always used in the correct, regional context. Whether you are an in­di­vidu­al, an or­gan­isa­tion or a company, you signal that your content is of par­tic­u­lar interest and relevance to people from the country or from the re­spect­ive language area if your web address has a country-specific ending.

If you want to serve several markets, different domains with matching ccTLDs and trans­lated, localised content are generally a good option. However, it should be noted that here, for example, separate external linking is very important, which can sometimes prove difficult, es­pe­cially for smaller companies, shops, etc. In this case, a generic top-level domain with sub­do­mains for the various countries may well be the better choice.

Changes in the ccTLD system

Given the geo­graph­ic­al and political back­ground of country code top-level domains, it’s often the case that some changes need to be made. Even today, ICANN is often busy with the task of both deleting no-longer relevant ccTLDs as well as re­gis­ter­ing new ones.

Proof of just how long some of these cases can drag out can be seen in some of the ongoing cases involving country ccTLDs of the former Soviet Union. Although the USSR collapsed in 1991, it remains possible even to this day to register a domain under .su. The following domains have been suc­cess­fully deleted and now count as former ccTLDs:

• .an: citizens of the Neth­er­lands Antilles were able to register with an .an address until the country was dissolved in 2010. ICANN accepted the domains .bq (Caribbean Neth­er­lands), .cw (Curaçao), and .sx (Sint Maarten), which have since fully replaced .an (of­fi­cially dis­con­tin­ued in 2015).

• .dd: the .dd domain was ori­gin­ally intended for the GDR (German Demo­crat­ic Republic), which still existed when the ccTLDs were first in­tro­duced. However, the domain extension was only ever used in­tern­ally at Jena and Dresden uni­ver­sit­ies.

• .yu: the former Yugoslav Republic’s ccTLD and its since dissolved pre­de­cessor state, Serbia and Montenegro, was removed in 2010 after .yu website owners were able to divide the domain into .rs (Serbia) and .me (Montenegro).

• .zr: shortly after the country code top-level domain for the Republic of Zaire was in­tro­duced, the African state changed its name to the Demo­crat­ic Republic of Congo in 1997 and was assigned its new domain, .cd, at the same time. The domain ending .zr was finally deleted by ICANN in 2001.

Top-level domains worldwide

Generic top-level domains such as new top-level domains (nTLDs) play an important role in the global com­par­is­on. The most popular domain ending, which is used by over 50% of websites, is the top-level domain .com, the second is the country domain, .cn for the People’s Republic of China. According to Domain Name Industry Brief from Verisign, there are currently more than 135 million domains re­gistered worldwide with a country code top-level domain (as of Q1 2023).

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