An Appeal to Google: Make ".io" a gccTLD

In defense of the current status: You are all misusing (or absuing) the DNS. Do you live in (or target) the British Indian Ocean Territory? No? Then this domain is not meant for you. This is a hack, and I don't like it. (For the same reason i don't like the new gTLDs) This sound a bit like a complain that reading Shakespeare in hexspeak is not very pleasant.<p>/Edit: Sorry for beating a dead horse. I know TLDs are not used the way I think they should be used. But I think it was important to point out once again that this is a dirty hack. It works, but when working outside of the spec you should be aware of it a accept shortcomings. Not saying you should not ask google to route around it. But it has it limits. ".at" are meant for Austria and not for email providers, that's something they just should deal with.

Flame me down, but this is what you get when you "misuse" .io.

This is a complicated solution that will produce many false positives. The simpler solution would be to just give each customer a box in Webmaster Tools where they could select whether they wanted their domain (wherever that is) to be targeted generically.

This topic is especially sensitive to me, so please enjoy the enraged rant below.<p>-----<p>I have a better proposal:<p>STOP DOMAIN ABUSE!<p>Remember, back in the day, when .net meant you were a network services provider, or when .org was only used by non-profit organizations. Wasn't that confusing as hell?<p>What the hell happened?<p>The network had a beautiful, well planned design, and PEOPLE LIKE YOU threw it away.<p>YOU ARE THE PROBLEM, NOT GOOGLE.<p>I recently had a conversation, with someone I respect greatly, about creating a series of informational sites very specific to US audiences, and he had a fit when I insisted on using the .us TLD. (Blasphemy, right?) He demanded I use .io, for a site that contained exclusively United States related information... Seriously?<p>I will not participate in this madness, and the HN audience should know better.<p>It's really simple, you see: your new project has lots of video content? Considering .TV? Is your company based in Tuvalu? THEN DON'T USE IT.<p>.AM? That's Armenia .FM? Federated States of Micronesia .ME? Montenegro.<p>The list goes on and on. Wikipedia has a complete list of them, along with their intended uses and common abuses. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_doma...</a><p>What makes this whole thing even more insane is that there are still tons of quality .us domain names, completely open for registration, and people insist on using TLDs of other random places! The Indian Ocean? Really?<p>I want some of whatever everyone is smoking.<p>"Only you can prevent domain abuse."

Personally I've been against the 'abuse' of the domain name system in this way (using ccTLDs as if they were gTLDs) for years, but the world disagrees with me. So at this point there seems little point in hanging on to geo-targeting by ccTLD, might as well flatten the playing field.<p>But we do need some country-targeting and while we do have the Webmaster Tools thing (but that is only Google-specific, you'd end up having to do this for any and all search engines, if they offered it) I'd like to see control put back into the hands of the sites themselves, and have some way of tagging available in the HTML of the page.<p>It'd also get rid of the ridiculous assumption that search engines make that if your site is hosted at an IP in a country, then that's the country that should be targeted in their results (if there are no other signals, ie ccTLD). Here in the UK there are many web hosts which are based in Ireland or Europe, and at the moment I worry that using them would hurt the site's reach into a UK search result.

Why are people arguing over the misuse of the .io TLD?<p>No one is saying not to use it - but if you misuse it, then you should understand the consequences. If you buy a domain in the .ly TLD and it gets removed for whatever reason, it's your fault. If you brick your iPhone while jailbreaking it, it is your fault. Go ahead and hack away, as is the spirit of everyone on this site - but don't think that it means everything will behave the way you expect it to.

gccTLD = Generic Country Code Top Level Domains<p><a href="https://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&#38;answer=1347922" rel="nofollow">https://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&#3...</a>

I'd argue many TLDs present the same issue. I myself use the .es TLD (Spain) as a "novelty" domain name (geekeri.es), but Google won't treat its content as targeted towards international, and mainly english-speaking audience.<p>It's a shame and I would have prefered Google had chosen to look at the language of the content instead of merely the TLD. Anyway, I like my domain name and wouldn't change it for a gold bullion.

Why was this even originally selected by tech companies? Trendiness? Because they saw the .io standing for input/output?

.de is also used in many hacks, maybe even more popular than .io, and Google does not allow to change the geographic target for those domains in Webmaster Tools.<p>Any idea why? Do they fear that this setting will be abused? Hope to hold the floodgate and have people use geographically "appropriate" TLDs?

Had the same issue. Got a couple nice .io names for APIs, found they didn't cooperate with tools and ranked poorly, shelved them.<p>Thanks for bringing this up.

Kind of off topic, but I went to change my password for the IO NIC after reading this. Apparently they store it in plain text...

Did you have to spam my .io mailbox?

Most of the ten gccTLD's he mentions as being unpopular have, in the past, been associated with giant penalties in Google's rankings, especially .cc, .ws and .tk which hosted large amounts of spammy content for a really long time.

Use .co<p>There are plenty available. Google treats it as a GTLD and co is meaningful if you are using it for a company. It's also only around $15 for a registration. Some of those country codes have ridiculous prices.

.io is now in the list. See <a href="http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&#38;answer=1347922" rel="nofollow">http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&#38...</a>.

So you've bought something deliberately because it's the cheap option that comes with a downside.<p>And now you want to drop the downside. Maybe you'll even be successful, at least a little... good luck.

.io has a normalized meaning. Accept it, or simply don't use it :)

I don't see how .io is different from .fm or .ly or .amillionothercountryTLDsthatpeopleusefortechnicallyinappropriatereasons in this regard.

Looks like it has been added :<p>.fm .gg .io .la .me

Why does it matter which country a site is located?<p>Seems like it would only be used for prejudice against certain countries.

We need .js !!!

Why appeal to Google? Appeal to ICANN and IANA.