
Google now treats .io as a gccTLD - joshmcmillan
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1347922
======
Xcelerate
260 days ago I posted a webapp I made on HN, listing all of the available
remaining .io domains in order of most common words -- with 2, 3, 4, and 5
letter columns. It was completely free, but it got one upvote I think? The
site is currently down, but if there's interest I can put it back online.

~~~
Gertig
It's tough to get traction on HN for certain things. Also, if you think about
it people don't want other people to know what domain names are available
"just in case".

There are currently 26 three letter words/common acronyms left. List available
here for a small fee <http://andio.herokuapp.com>

~~~
samstave
That's lame - $20 for this list? What's the likelihood one can actually
register one of the 3 letter domains for a typical reg fee and not some huge
cost?

~~~
jacquesm
Here is one list of short .io names:

[https://iwantmyname.com/blog/2012/05/100-shockingly-short-
io...](https://iwantmyname.com/blog/2012/05/100-shockingly-short-io-domain-
names-available-today.html)

and here is another:

are.io bow.io cot.io cry.io dew.io dip.io dye.io ear.io egg.io fee.io fry.io
had.io hem.io hid.io hut.io jug.io lid.io lie.io lip.io men.io mop.io mow.io
oar.io ore.io pit.io rag.io ray.io rib.io rid.io rot.io sod.io toe.io tow.io
tug.io was.io won.io yaw.io

I did not bother to verify availability.

~~~
bobwaycott
This is from a few minutes ago: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5663917>

~~~
muloka
Ha you beat me to it.

------
c3o
Did you know their rules state: "No .IO domain may be used, directly or
indirectly, for any purpose that is sexual or pornographic or that is against
the statutory laws of any Nation."?

The laws of ANY nation?! I founded a UGC .io startup in 2007 (we were the
biggest .io site for quite a while), and while we never had any trouble, I
find that clause worrisome.

------
highace
I don't know how to feel about this. I've commented many times before, warning
others about the .io domain and the consequences they'll face with ranking on
Google. Now that won't be a problem. But let's face it, .io will never be as
'accepted' as .com by Billy Customer, and now squatters have a reason to go
buying them all up, so good luck grabbing one for a techie startup or niche.

~~~
kmfrk
It requires something about the way we conduct ourselves to change, at least.

I remember reading about how Japanese advertizers would use Google queries in
ads instead of URLs - and we in the West did little to improve on that with QR
codes - so it's possible that there's a place for .io somewhere. I just think
it'd be a really bad idea to use them interchangeably with .com domains.

I guess the same can be said of .co domains, which look like typos to the
average person, when they aren't used as shorturls.

~~~
corin_
> _I remember reading about how Japanese advertizers would use Google queries
> in ads instead of URLs_

That's happened in the UK as well, though (in my experience) more often with
video adverts (e.g. movie trailers) than print advertising. It began with
stuff like "AOL Keyword: harry potter" (was it "keyword"? can't remember, was
definitely AOL), and mostly died after that, but have seen it with Google a
few times.

And on the flip side, you seem to suggest that QR codes are a western thing -
actually they were invented in Japan, and are much bigger in Asia than over
here.

~~~
Maxious
I see "Internet Search: 'model xyz'" in a lot of car ads. Easier to remember
than a URL and shows off how good your SEO is ;)

------
DanBlake
Sort of surprised .ly is missing. Maybe related to the conflict over there,
because it was/is pretty widely used by startups

~~~
arb99
I thought that as well.

Also, I can't think of any .ms sites yet that is listed there. Even a google
seasrch of site:.ms doesn't seem to show up anything that sticks out... maybe
a few music related sites using it as the 'music' tld?

~~~
andybak
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.ms#Usage>

------
purephase
nic.io must be tickled pink. Queue the land grab!

In other words, I'm not sure this is a good thing or sets a good precedent. I
understand the rationale as they're just reacting to what the industry is
doing (I'm looking at you GH) but I imagine we'll see more of this in the
future.

I say all this as a (legitimate) .io domain holder.

Somewhere there is a bailiwick just waiting for the crafting community to jump
all over it.

~~~
jevinskie
I'm interested in your relation to the territories, if you don't mind me
asking?

~~~
purephase
I meant that I have a domain name that I'm using for a legitimate service that
I purchased knowing that it wasn't a gccTLD. My "legitimate" comment was
specifically related to the influx of squatters we're about to see in this
space.

------
kintamanimatt
Wow, someone at Google finally successfully championed the cause! Thanks to
whoever you are if you're reading this.

------
daok
May I know what does it do to be in the gccTLD list? Does it changes something
for those website?

~~~
mhaymo
It means that Google will treat it as a worldwide website, as opposed to being
country-specific. This means that .io domains are more likely to show up in US
search results, and will no longer be given priority in "the British Indian
Ocean Territory"[1]

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.io>

------
Dramatize
I've always thought the .io is much better than .co .co seems too much like a
miss-spelling of .com

------
lubos
I'm surprised nobody has pointed out that this is not an official announcement
from Google. It is merely an updated KB page.

Google is treating .io as gccTLD for at least 6 months.

~~~
eli
Where did you get "6 months" from?

~~~
lubos
I own .IO domain and I was able to set it as gccTLD in Google Webmasters Tool
for at least last 6 months (but not when I registered it more than 2 years
ago).

Not to mention my .io domain ranks quite well for my keywords across all
national google front-ends for quite some time.

------
iand
What's the attraction of the .io domain? Seeing it crop up in many places and
I'm not sure what the significance is.

~~~
tomchuk
In addition to the "techiness" of io, a lot of the draw has been availability.
They've been going at $50/yr for a while, which has kept the squatters away.
Last time I looked, there were a plethora of three-letter English words
available.

I jumped in in 2009, and basically had my pick of 2-letter domains.

~~~
Gertig
There are less than 40 three letter word domains names available now.
<http://andio.herokuapp.com>

~~~
tomchuk
$20 for the results of bash one-liner? (by my count there are far more than 40
left)

    
    
        for i in `egrep '^[a-z]{3}$' /usr/share/dict/words`
        do
          whois $i.io | grep -q '\- Available' && echo $i.io
        done
    

Heck, there's still a few two-letter .io domains left

    
    
        for i in {a..z}{a..z}.io
        do
          whois $i | grep -q '\- Available' && echo $i
        done
    
        iz.io
        jy.io
        kf.io
        kq.io
        lq.io
        qf.io
        qg.io
        qj.io
        qo.io
        qs.io
        qy.io
        uj.io
        yd.io
        yl.io
        yz.io
    

But, yeah, I agree, .io choices are getting a little thinner than they used to
be.

~~~
Gertig
Yes, $20 for you is too much, but there are lots of people who have no idea
how to do a bash one-liner (me being one of them actually).

I worked on this project a while back and posted the list for free for over a
year, not sure why it's a sin to charge money for it now.

------
jurassic
I hope prices stay "high"; maybe $55+/yr is enough to keep the domain
squatters in check to some extent.

~~~
kijin
.io prices are coming down rather quickly. Gandi.net sells them for $40
apiece, and I wouldn't be surprised if it became available for half of that
with some sort of promotion. I'm waiting to grab one when that happens.

~~~
StavrosK
Damnit, I just paid $72 three seconds ago, before reading the comments.

~~~
tracker1
I paid close to $100 about a year ago... though renewal will be less...

------
jeremymcanally
Excellent. I'm prepping to launch <http://rss.io> and worried that the .io
domain would kind of kill its discoverability in search results. Really happy
to see this, as I'm sure many others are, too, who are using .io domains the
same way.

Maybe people will want to take tele.io and newsies.io off my hands now (half
kidding but seriously, email if you're interested :)).

~~~
Gertig
Great domain name and I love the header on the site. Love that you are willing
to put this out there with placeholder text still in place. Why not right!

------
shloime
Wow! They actually listened. Who would have thought..

------
vizzah
Google, .im is missing from the list. Should have been treated almost equally
to '.me'.. and .me got it's gTLD status right from the start.

~~~
evan_
I can't think of anything that uses .im, what am I forgetting?

~~~
chrisballinger
<http://www.pidgin.im> and <http://www.adium.im>

------
stephanos2k
I'm amazed at how fast this was done, seems like only weeks ago several people
suggested this.

~~~
ceejayoz
It probably helped that every Github Pages site started going to
username.github.io. I'd imagine a variety of repositories became harder to
find, which'd be noticeable at Google HQ.

~~~
mh-
Based on their reluctance to put Google Code out of its misery, its sometimes
hard to believe they might be aware. :)

~~~
benackles
It's a good thing they don't "put Google Code out of it's misery". There are
millions of sites using jQuery hosted on Google Code.

~~~
ceejayoz
I doubt
[https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.0.0/jquery.mi...](https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.0.0/jquery.min.js)
would go away if Google Code did.

------
programminggeek
I think it would be better if google would let webmasters just tell them if
you want them to treat your domain as gccTLD or not. I had some cool ideas for
.mx, but if they want to treat it as Mexico-only, then what's the point of
buying one?

------
donretag
Maybe I finally do something with my .io domain (or the countless .com domains
I have registered)!

My .io has been hosted on GAE since the start. I wish GAE would support naked
domains. <http://www.macch.io/>

~~~
n00btroll
Actually you can direct macch.io to www.macch.io. Iremember doing it for one
of my domain which was hosted on AppEngine.

------
xur17
I'm curious how the average consumer (non-tech audience) views a .io domain.

I'm planning to build a consumer facing site and use .io as it's an easy way
to get a decently good domain, but I don't want to scare people off with the
domain.

~~~
cmalpeli
I've been using it for jobboard.io for around 8 months and have only had one
customer ask me about it. To be fair I don't know how many people are NOT
using me because they don't get the domain and are simply moving on. In the
long run I don't think it's an issue as most people CNAME their own custom
domain for their job boards anyways.

------
dangoldin
Interesting. Years ago I wanted to do a side project and ended up acquiring
the "words.io" domain name. I was also able to snag the wordsio.com as well to
avoid some confusion.

Maybe this will get me to actually do something with it.

------
smallegan
Mark this day next year to check for good expired .io domain names :-)

~~~
xur17
+~3 months for the grace period to expire.

------
silent1mezzo
Would really like to see this happen with .ly domains too.

------
xSwag
That's great! I'm guessing that a lot more startups are going to use a .io
domain now since there are a lot of good domain names available.

------
bobwaycott
Currently available as-of-this-moment 3-letter .io domain names:

<http://pastie.org/7809651>

~~~
RKearney
I just bought a 2 letter .io.

At the time of this comment, there are only 2 left.

------
Gertig
This is pretty cool, I have been a huge fan of .io domain names for a long
time. I even tried (unsuccessfully) to sell a, checked daily, list of the
available three letter domain names for $19. There are currently 40 three
letter word domain names left, there are a couple common acronyms like CST.io
that are available too.

If interested <http://andio.herokuapp.com>

EDIT: was.io and mph.io have been purchased since posting this comment, now 38
left.

~~~
ambiate
I was shocked to see 'hey.io' was just bought today.

~~~
Gertig
Yeah, there are some really interesting words that have been available way
longer than I thought they would be.

------
intrawl
Is there any way to register an io domain without your address and phone
number showing up in the whois information?

~~~
vincentmac
Try gandi.net. They offer free whois privacy with registration and their
prices on .io domains are VERY good. One thing you will have to do is let your
credit card company know about the transaction as the charge will come from
France and will be flagged as fraudulent (at least that was my experience with
AMEX).

~~~
intrawl
Thanks, gandi looks nice. However, their domain privacy page doesn't mention
anything about .io domains. Does anyone know if they offer whois privacy with
.io domains as well?

~~~
corford
I use Gandi for a load of domains (they're great!) and have just bought an io
one through them but sadly there isn't much whois privacy apart from hiding
your email address. Name, postal address and telephone are all visible. I
think this might be a .io requirement though since Gandi offer whois
protection for free. You just enable it on your contact record and any domain
linked to that contact will then use Gandi's data rather than yours. Depending
on the tld this means either everything is masked apart from the owner's name
(e.g. for .com or .net) or only certain fields are (as determined by the
various registries and each one's policy on hiding real owner info).

------
gadders
This has inspired me to buy another .by domain, just on the offchance...

------
melvinmt
Hmm.. might be a good time to put my translation.io domain to good use.

------
stevenklein
What will the SEO effects of this be to existing .io site?

~~~
purephase
I imagine that the previous localization results for .io will be scrapped.
This means that .io domains will now rank as high as .com/.net etc.

------
outside1234
Thank you Google!

------
omegote
Hipsters win

------
pagekicker
so what?

------
Gertig
You can buy the list of 30 remaining three letter words/common acronyms for
$19: <http://andio.herokuapp.com>

I'm sure you could do this yourself but why waste $19 of your time :)

There were 40 left about 2 hours ago, so far these domains have been purchased
in the last 2 hours: was.io, mph.io, lie.io, avg.io, cum.io, ear.io, era.io,
hwy.io, shy.io, sox.io

