What are ccTLDs? An Introduction Country Code Top-level Domains

On the internet, domains are a way to simplify and memorize addresses to websites that would otherwise be difficult for humans to remember and access, since websites are hosted on servers who are located and communicated via IP-addresses. Could you imagine your friend recommending a specific cooking website and then handing you a slip of paper with 192.168.01.8 written on it? Domains are here to help make these addresses more personal and easy to remember for us humans, but what you maybe didn’t know is that there are different types of domains. One of those types are ccTLDs which stand for country code top-level domains.

What is a ccTLD?

A domain consists of two different parts - a second level domain (SLD) and a top-level domain (TDL). The SLD is usually the first part of a domain, for example “google” while the TLD (also often referred to as the domain extension) is the second part of the domain (eg. “.com”, “.org” or “.net”). While users have full creative freedom when defining their SLD (as long as it’s available), TLDs are constrained as they need to exist in the TLD registry that is managed by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (AINA).

A subset of TLDs are ccTLDs or country code top-level domains that are exclusive to certain countries or geographical locations. These TLDs are oftentimes managed by organizations or authorities in the respective locations and can have certain requirements such as having citizenship in a country in order to register its ccTLD (which for example is the case for Japan’s .jp TLD, which requires you to have a physical address in Japan).

When to use a ccTLD?

While some of the most popular non-country-code TLDs like .com are often a better and safer way, there are certainly cases where it makes more sense to use a ccTLD domain.

Targeting a specific nationality

The most obvious use case for ccTLDs is making websites targeted at a specific nationality or geographical location. This may make your website more trustworthy and relevant for that target group and can also have benefits on search engines. Many people will however expect your website to be in a certain language when they visit a website with their language code which is a reason that many websites have multiple domains if they offer different languages (eg. .com for english-speakers and .it for italians).

Special ccLTDs

There is a small amount of ccTLDs names that are not used to target a specific nationality or geographical location. This is because some ccLTDs are used by certain communities where the domain extension has a meaning within that community. These ccLTDs are commonly known as domain hacks.

Take for example the ccLTD for The British Indian Territory, .io, which is instead often used for websites related to technology and web-focused applications as “IO” is an acronym used in the tech-community for “input output”. This is the same case for ccLTDs such as .ai (artificial intelligence), .to (torrent websites) and .tv (video and streaming sites such as twitch.tv).

This makes using a ccTLD viable even if you’re not making a site for a particular nationality or location but instead within a specific website genre.

Examples of country code top-level domains

Some ccLTDs are very known even outside the area that they are targeted at. These are extensions such as:

• .co.uk (United Kingdom)
• .de (Germany)
• .ru (Brazil)

Some other popular ccLTDs that are usually used for certain communities are:

• .tv: TLD for the island country and microstate Tuvalu but rather used for video and streaming websites such as twitch.tv.
• .ai: Originally meant for Anguilla but often used for websites related to artificial intelligence, which is particularly relevant in these times with popular AI chatbots such as ChatGPT and Google Bard.
• .gg: TLD for Bailiwick of Guernsey (Island group off the coast of Normandy) but often used for gaming-related websites since gg is an acronym for good game. An example is the chat client Discord uses discord.gg when creating invite links to chat rooms.

Some lesser known but creative ways of using extensions are:

• .ms: Meant for Montserrat but unofficially used for Microsoft-specific sites.
• .dj: LTD for the African country Djibouti but in some cases used for music websites.
• .me: LTD for Montenegro but used in sites that offer personal homepages and portfolios with me referring to oneself.

These ccLTD examples are a few that exist. If you wish to see a full list of all ccTLDs, you can find one on ICANNWiki here. If you are interested in a full top-level domain list including both ccTLDs and gTLDs, you can find a list here.

Benefits of using a ccTLD for your website

The LTD of a website can help indicate some essential information about a website’s content before people even land on the site. This helps make it easier for people to know that your website is the site that they are looking for, either because it is in a certain language or because it is targeted at a certain profession, hobby or community (like .io or .tv).