Country Code TLDs and their unintended use cases
Country Code TLDs (ccTLDs) are top level domains that are assigned to countries with names based on their ISO 3166 2-character country code. Their intended usecase are for regional, local sites or otherwise is tied to a country. But due to two-letter TLDs being reserved to ccTLDs, and there being fewer gTLDs in the past than there were now, a lot of effort has been put into repurposing ccTLDs, as well as creating clever domain hacks and short domains out of obscure but convenient country codes.
Many small countries have either struck digital gold with their country code, or been robbed of their space on the internet by opportunistic entrepreneurs who realised their worth far earlier than they did. This blog post goes over a list of the unintended use cases of ccTLDs, from specific domain hacks to full registry takeovers, but is by no means exhaustive.
.ad - Andorra
Sometimes used as a domain hack for advertising related services. Whether the TLD as a whole has made its way into any ad blocking lists is unknown, albeit would have been amusing.
.af - Afghanistan
In English slang, AF is an acronym that stands for “as fuck”. It was notably used by the Mastodon instance queer.af, which was suspended in 2024 for reasons that may be obvious if you follow the news.
.ai - Anguilla
Used for various machine learning sites under the guise of “AI”. With the recent hype around machine learning, the Government of Anguilla have received a lot of revenue from the registration fees for domain names.
.ar - Argentina
Gets some use for Augmented Reality projects, as it has the abbreviation AR.
.as - American Samoa
Used sometimes for domain hacks in things that end in -as, or for companies in countries such as Norway and Denmark where the suffix for companies is AS or A/S.
.at - Austria
While it mostly sees use for its intended purpose in Austria, it also sees some usage in domain hacks for things that end in -at, or simply the English word “at”.
.ax - Åland
There does not seem to be a lot of domain hack usage of .ax, but Wi-Fi 6 also goes under the name 802.11ax leading to a very amusing joke in the Nordic countries about what country has the best internet speed. Maybe this will expand its usage in the future.
.be - Belgium
Mostly just sees use in Belgium, but YouTube uses youtu.be for providing shorter URLs to videos and other content.
.bz - Belize
It was originally marketed a as standing for “business”, but the newer .biz gTLD has overshadowed it much to the dismay of the .bz owners.
.cc - Cocos Islands
The .cc TLD has been promoted as “the next .com”, and sees a lot of usage as a generic TLD.
.cf - Central African Republic
Used to be operated by Freenom who would allow free domain registrations (see .tk), but is now in limbo with Freenom ceasing to operate.
.ck - Cook Islands
The .ck TLD generally only allows registrations under second level categories, one of them being for business organisations. The resulting domain is “.co.ck”, which can be humourous.
.cm - Cameroon
Used a lot for typosquatting due to it being a missing “o” off from the corresponding .com domain.
.co - Colombia
Marketed a lot as a generic TLD, sometimes used for typosquatting on corresponding .com domains, and for various company-specific shorteners such as Google’s g.co.
.cv - Cape Verde
CV also stands for Curriculum Vitae, also known as a resume, making it be marketed to those wanting a personal website to host their CV on.
.cx - Christmas Island
You know what this TLD is infamous for. I’m not even going to say it.
.dj - Djibouti
Used by DJs and some other music-related sites.
.es - Spain
Gets used mostly for its intended purpose in Spain, but also for domain hacks in words ending with -es.
.fm - Micronesia
FM Radio is a type of radio broadcasting and as such turned .fm into a domain hack for radio websites, but also music websites in general such as Last.fm.
.ga - Gabon
Used to be operated by Freenom who would allow free domain registrations (see .tk), but the contract was terminated in 2023 by the original registry.
.gg - Guernsey
Within gaming slang, “gg” is short for “good game” which is usually uttered at the end of a match in multiplayer games. Various gaming websites use it as a domain, such as Discord using it for discord.gg invite links.
.gl - Greenland
Used for some things that abbreviate to “gl” such as “graphics library” (i.e: open.gl), or for Google’s URL shortener goo.gl.
.gq - Equatorial Guinea
Used to be operated by Freenom who would allow free domain registrations (see .tk), but is now in limbo with Freenom ceasing to operate.
.im - Isle of Man
Used for some instant messaging services because of the acronym IM, such as Gitter. The XMPP server software Prosody also uses .im for its use for instant messaging.
.io - British Indian Ocean Territory
The .io TLD is assigned to the British Indian Ocean Territory, a country with quite a lot of baggage to say the least. It is used for various technology websites due to its similarity to the I/O term in computer science. The usage was originally popularised by Google with their Google I/O and has now become fairly popular despite the existence and management of the country being… laden with ethical concerns.
Recently the territory was decided to be handed over to the neighbouring country Mauritius, sparking discussion about what will happen with .io. While the regular process for defunct countries is to deprecate and phase out their ccTLD, the disproportionate amount of usage .io has gotten will likely lead to it becoming another special case.
.is - Iceland
Used mostly for its intended purpose in Iceland, but in 2017 a certain far-right website moved their domain to the .is TLD after having their regular domain taken away. They were shortly suspended. Then five years later, another one did the same. They were also suspended.
.it - Italy
Used mostly for its intended purpose in Italy, but some IT companies/projects use it in a similar manner to how they would use .io.
.ly - Libya
Used by various link shorteners, first popularised by bit.ly.
.md - Moldova
While it mostly sees use in Moldova, it also sees use for Markdown-related projects because of the file extension .md.
.me - Montenegro
Marketed and used a lot for personal websites and all sorts of domain hacks. Google considers it a de facto gTLD now due to its usage being a lot more generic than country targeted.
.ml - Mali
Used to be operated by Freenom who would allow free domain registrations (see .tk), but the contract expired in 2023 and is now operated as a regular TLD with paid domain names.
.ms - Montserrat
Used by Microsoft for a lot of shortened links, such as aka.ms.
.nu - Niue
The word “Nu” means “Now” in Swedish, Danish and Dutch leading to it being used for a lot of clever domain hacks, most predominantly in Sweden. This has gotten to the point where the .nu domain is effectively owned and run by the Swedish government through what amounted to a hostile takeover, much to the dismay of the island nation Niue.
.pw - Palau
The country code of Palau has been turned into a backronym for “Professional Web” and has been marketed as a TLD for professionals.
.py - Paraguay
Source files for Python code use the .py file extension, leading to it being used for the websites of some Python libraries.
.rs - Serbia
Source files for Rust code use the .rs file extension, leading to Serbia’s TLD being used extensively for Rust-related libraries and other projects.
.se - Sweden
While it mostly sees use in Sweden (I use it!), I’ve also seen it being used for domain hacks with things ending in -se.
.sh - Saint Helena
Shell script files use the .sh file extension, leading to it being used for a lot of things related to command-line terminals. Also used for domain hacks with names ending in “sh”, and
.st - Sao Tome
The .st TLD is administered by the Swedish ISP and cloud provider Bahnhof, and is marketed as a generic TLD. It has also been marketed as standing for Stockholm, before the introduction of the .stockholm TLD.
.tk - Tokelau
The .tk TLD used to be operated by Freenom who gave it away as free domains for anyone to register (with certain restrictions), along with the later additions of the .cf, .ga, .gq and .ml TLDs.
While the prospect of free domains was always enticing to people who didn’t have means to pay for domains (I myself started out with .tk when hosting principia-web), it undoubtedly raised the attention of many bad actors. The reputations of all the free TLDs Freenom administered has been dragged through the mud by scammers for many years until some of the signed contracts expired, and Freenom fully ceasing to operate in early 2024. How a tiny Pacific Island became the global capital of cybercrime is a great article to read for more details about the story of .tk, along with the fate of other similar ccTLDs being mentioned in passing.
.to - Tonga
Used a lot for domain hacks relating to the English preposition “to”, such as URL shorteners that take you “to” another URL. It is also a popular TLD for torrenting and piracy sites, with the coincidental convenience for such users of the TLD that .to does not have a dedicated WHOIS registry.
.tv - Tuvalu
TV is short for television, and the TLD has been marketed for anything related to media and video streaming. .tv is one of those TLDs that the host country managed really well to monetise for the technical development of the small island state of Tuvalu.
.vg - Virgin Islands
Used for some video gaming related websites.
.ws - Samoa
While the designation was based on country’s old name “Western Samoa”, it has been marketed as a general purpose TLD with “ws” standing for website.
.yt - Mayotte
Since the country code matches up with YouTube’s common abbreviation, some YouTube channels use the TLD for their accompanying websites. YouTube itself however uses the youtu.be domain for shorter URLs.
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