Monthly Archive

HosterStats.com has investigated how domains are used within the .co name space.  .co domains are interesting because .co is the country code for Colombia, and has traditionally been structured in the same way as the United Kingdom’s  is structured with a defined group of second level domains allowing people to register a third level domains.

In Colombia
.com.co  .org.co  edu.co  gov.co  net.co  mil.co  and  nom.co (private persons)

In the UK
.co.uk  .org.uk   .ac.uk  .sch.uk  .gov.uk  .net.uk .mod.uk  .nic.uk  .nhs.uk  
.ltd.uk  .plc.uk  .parliament.uk  .police.uk  and  .me.uk (private persons)

A year ago the .co registry was persuaded to allow the second level to be opened up for open registrations anyname.co aimed primarily at the international market.  HosterStats has analysed how these new domains are being used a year after launch.

The uses vary from company names like www.google.co who use it to redirect to other sites rather than a Columbian search engine which can be found at the www.google.com.co, to PPC pages, to holding pages, to non resolving sites etc.

PPC Parked pages 48.5%
Holding pages 13.8%
Active Use 12.9%
Redirects to domains in other TLDs 8.2% (Exact match 3.5%)
Redirects to other .co domains 2.8%
Brand Protection 2%
Forbidden/ Not found 1.4%
For Sale 1.1%
Expired 0.7%
Registry reserved premium domains 0.7%