Country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) domains

Written by Jose Vicente

Country code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs) are two-letter domains reserved specifically for a particular country or territory. The names corresponding to each of these domains are regulated by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) and most of them correspond to the country codes of the ISO 3166-1 standard of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

In general, ccTLD domains are reserved for registration by persons or organizations resident in the country concerned. However, there are also open ccTLDs, which can be registered by any person or entity, regardless of country of residence. These domains usually represent a particular brand regardless of the country to which they correspond. For example, although the “.co” domain would initially correspond to Colombia’s ccTLD, this domain is currently used as an alternative to “.com” for businesses, since the abbreviation Co. usually refers to the terms Company, Corporation, etc.

In Spain, Red.es is the entity responsible for the management of .es country code top-level domains.

In some countries, various vicissitudes led to the popularization of second-level domains, such as .co.uk. Although originally the ccTLD for the United Kingdom was .gb, before the ISO standardization of country codes used today, the .uk domain was already registered, which favored its rapid adoption and the preference of using it over the .gb standard, which is no longer available today.

SEO relevance of country code top-level domains (ccTLDs)

The use of a country code Top Level Domain (.es, .fr, .co.uk, etc.) is a direct indication to search engines that the domain should be more relevant to searches made from a certain country. This type of domain extension is the first priority factor for search engines when geolocating a domain. On the other hand, if we use generic domains such as .com, .info, .net, etc., search engines should look at other factors when geolocating the domain.

• Geographic targeting configuration from Google Search Console.
• Existence of hreflang link elements.
• Source of links.
• Domain registration data.
• Etc.

Most ccTLD domains are geographically oriented by search engines to the country to which they correspond and there is no possibility to change this geographic orientation from the corresponding configuration option in Google Search Console and the tools of other search engines. This also applies to subdomains and subdirectories of ccTLD domains. That is to say, a .es domain will be geographically oriented by default to Spain and we will not be able to change this configuration from Google Search Console neither for mydomain.es, nor for subdomain.mydomain.es or for mydomain,es/subdirectory/.

All other relevancy factors being equal, in principle, a ccTLD domain would rank better than an equivalent TLD domain for searches made from the country to which it corresponds. The downside is that the positioning of ccTLD domains for searches from other countries is worse than for a generic gTLD domain. Often, the greater long-term popularity that a single gTLD domain can accumulate makes this option preferable to the use of multiple ccTLD domains for international websites.

Some open ccTLD domains are geographically configurable from search engine tools (e.g. .co, .ws, etc.).

Roadmap for developing international versions of a website in ccTLD domains

1. Buy the ccTLD domains of the countries where you think you may have business interests in the future.
2. As long as you do not develop specific content for these countries, redirect with a 301 permanent redirect all acquired domains to your main domain (i.e. 301 redirect from yourdomain.fr, yourdomain.es, yourdomain.it, etc. to yourdomain.com).
3. Develop microsites in different languages to explore, with a limited investment, the business potential in other countries. These microsites should be implemented as subdirectories of the main domain. For example: yourdomain.com/fr/, yourdomain.com/en/, yourdomain.com/it/, etc.
4. In case you want to fully develop a website in another country, perform a migration from the corresponding subdirectory to the corresponding ccTLD domain (for example, from yourdomain.com/it/ to yourdomain.it) and host that domain on a server in the corresponding country.
5. Fully develop the websites of countries with high business potential in ccTLD domains hosted in each of the corresponding countries. Generate geo-localized popularity (from country domains to the corresponding ccTLD domain) and keep content up to date and of interest to each audience.

Note, however, that many companies (including some as important as Zara or Apple) have not found it necessary to reach point 4 of the above roadmap and are positioning themselves with notable success internationally using structured versions as sub-directories of a single gTLD domain (in both cases, a .com).

More references about ccTLD domains

How to choose a good domain name for my website

Server geolocation

ccTLD on ICANNWiki

International search engine positioning

Top Country Code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs)

These are the main country code top-level domains along with the country to which they correspond and the entity responsible for their management: