Matt Cutt’s Gives Warning About Using ‘Creative’ ccTLDs

Matt Cutt’s had answered a great question earlier this week about using ccTLD’s to create a unique domain name such as www.google.it for “Google It”. “Should I use ccTLDs for sites not targeted to those countries?” In-fact there is an awesome tool out there created by @case, @ceedub, @connor, and @rr called Domainr which quickly finds you some creative domain names that can be registered via various ccTLD’s. The problem here is that Google geo-targets their search results – and as such country code top level domains are generally targeted to the country they are from.

If you watch through the entire video – you really don’t get an exact answer as to whether or not you should, or shouldn’t, use it. Google’s Matt Cutts uses a case about a Long Island based business who wished to use the .li ccTLD, where the .li would stand for Long Island. However, since .li is the ccTLD for Liechtenstein, and the use of that ccTLD has primarily been for websites about Liechtenstein using .li to stand for Long Island would be an effort to change the intent of that ccTLD and according to Google would not be in the best interest of searchers.

However Google does acknowledge the use of some ccTLD’s for generic use; and as such does not tie these down to specific regions. These domains include .io, .cc, .cd, etc. You can view a full list of generic country code top level domains here.