Cutts explains when Google decides to make a ccTLD global.
Google’s SEO/Webspam leader Matt Cutts has released a new video about using a country code top level domain name for a website not targeted to that country.
His message is the same that Google has been giving for many years, but he added some more color about how the company decides what should become generic.
Google makes some domains globally targeted because they’ve been widely adopted for global use rather than country use. .Co and .TV are examples.
What if you want to use .li for Long Island or .ky for Kentucky?
Cutts said you probably shouldn’t get ahead of yourself.
For .li, the country code for Liechtenstein, Cutts said they looked into it and found that the domain is widely used in Liechtenstein. Thus, it wouldn’t be right to give it a global meaning.
He also gave .ky (Cayman) as an example.
Here are the ccTLDs Google treats as generics (as of today): .ad, .as, .bz, .cc, .cd, .co, .dj, .fm, .io, .la, .me, .ms, .nu, .sc, .sr, .su, .tv, .tk, .ws.
Note that .ly, a popular extension that belongs to Libya, is not on the list.
I see .pw didn’t make the generic list…however I’m guessing it will lean towards becoming more generic given what Matt Cutts presented here in the video.
If you have a website really targeting the whole world on a domain hack, I think your specific webmaster submission for approving it as a worldwide website, like if it were on a classic generic TLD, will be approved.
OK, I own one single word gamble related .AS and few other same word ccTLDs.
What is the difference between word.as and word.cctld as they both look same to me and if as a buyer I had to purchase one of them, I wouldn’t pay attention to ccTLD rather than the word’s quality in a first place. Would they appear differently in search when entering keywords or what?
Google uses .be for YouTube.
Google also uses .gl for their domain shortening service.
Both these alternative ccTLD applications are very useful and clever, but contradict what Matt is saying.