Scotland Wants Its Own Top-Level Domain ‘.SCO’

The Scottish Nationalist Government is reportedly considering a formal request with ICANN seeking a “.sco” top-level domain to replace the distinctly “Unionist” .co.uk.

There's a much more general and interesting issue behind this than the simple question of whether we need another quasi geographic TLD, like .eu or .asia but on a very much smaller scale.

Firstly, we've had new TLDs before and not all have been conspicuously successful.

Think of .biz and .info. How many significant players actively use these TLDs?

Comparatively few in my experience - .biz and .info seem to have become the almost exclusive haunt of the types of business that grow, leechlike, on the Internet by monetising traffic and optimising search engine placement.

Then there's .eu. While more widely used for what might be described as conventional business purposes, it has not been without its problems.

And let's not forget about .mobi.

Go to Google and search for site:*.mobi - see what you get.

Yes, there are some sites using .mobi that really are optimised for mobile devices, but an awful lot are just magnets for paid search engine clicks or one way streets leading to, let's just say, adult content. And most of the .mobi sites that really are optimised for mobile devices come from the shadier side of the Internet tracks - the Internet is for porn (and gambling), remember?

Conversely, many sites that are both optimised for mobile devices and have a more businesslike focus do not use domains in the .mobi TLD at all. Think of our own Planet Lotus, or even Facebook for that matter.

(And yes, I do know of one worthy exception to this generally rather grubby rule - CircleID's mobile site is at circleid.mobi.)

On the whole, though, dot mobi is simply a specific and very vivid illustration of the general principal that content cannot be defined by a domain name. This is the central argument used in RFC3675 against .sex (or for that matter .xxx) top level domains for adult content.

Secondly, are domain names even relevant any more?

Not in Japan at any rate, according to Cabel Sasser.

Within minutes of riding on the first trains in Japan, I notice a significant change in advertising, from train to television.


The trend? No more printed URL’s. The replacement? Search boxes! With recommended search terms!

This simply reflects the fact that few people ever bother to type a url into the address bar any more, if many ever did. Everyone now just uses search, so why not just tell them what to search for?

Clearly you need to be confident of your search engine placement for this to work - but work it surely will for many businesses - so why worry about .sco, .com, .mobi, .biz, .xxx or whatever at all?

Finally, I will just point out that the idea of advertising a search term as opposed to a URL isn't an altogether new one.

Works for me, so I won't be queuing up for my .sco domain when the early registration period opens - and yes, I am sure I am entitled to a .sco domain; I am a quarter scottish on my mother's side.

Category: Domains
Technorati: .mobi .sco Domain Internet search TLD

1. Yancy Lent04/04/2008 15:21:04
Homepage: http://www.yancylent.com

Once again, awesome post. The part on Japan reminds me of the AOL Keyword push from years back.

I wish .sco was out years ago. I maintain the site for my HS class, we use it to organize our reunions. I grew up Scotia, NY so the .sco would have been an ideal domain.

2. Vance Hedderel, Director of PR & Communications, dotMobi05/04/2008 20:05:21
Homepage: http://blog.mobi

You say that many sites that are both optimised for mobile devices and have a more businesslike focus do not use domains in the .mobi TLD at all.

I think some of the many global brands using the .mobi domain might disagree; you can see a list of some of them at http://mtld.mobi/node/997.

On another front, the 4 of the top 5 Nielson web sites use .mobi addresses, making the .mobi naming convention the most popular one.

I'll also say that we're just beginning to see an explosion in optimized-for-mobile web content. In scans dotMobi did of all mobile content in November 2007, we saw approximately 25,000 "real" content sites. In repeating that scan in February 2008, we saw more than 150,000 sites.

All that's to say I don't think the .mobi world is quite the content desert you're painting it to be in this piece.

3. Holly from mobiEnthusiast.mobi06/04/2008 20:04:23
Homepage: http://mobienthusiast.mobi

I'm wondering how long it's been since you did the actual google search for .mobi sites. With the tld in it's third year, expecting it to be as well-populated as .com is unrealistic, but there are some great sites out there. With http://mobienthusiast.mobi, you can see live sites that are mobile compliant from individual developers and domain name owners, as well as recent sites from such national and multinational companies as Hertz Rent A Car, Benetton, Disney, The Weather Channel and ESPN.

I would encourage you to give this tld some time before writing it off. Development is happening, you just have to know where to look.

4. Conrad Longmore07/04/2008 10:16:00
Homepage: http://www.dynamoo.com

The .sco proposal is not without precedent - there is a .cat TLD for Catalonia, but it's not exactly the same thing (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.cat)

.info and .biz domain names have been tarnished by spammers, because they are very cheap and .info in particular lends itself botnet support because of the rapid DNS updates it can do.

I have a suspicion that the majority of registrations are by domain owners protecting their IP rights.

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