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Google now treats .io as a gccTLD
- Xcelerate 13y ago260 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.
- Kiro 13y agoPlease do.
- unicornporn 13y agoStarting point: https://gist.github.com/tlehman/2865871 https://gist.github.com/tlehman/2865871
- Gertig 13y agoIt'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 http://andio.herokuapp.com
- samstave 13y agoThat'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 13y agoHere is one list of short .io names: https://iwantmyname.com/blog/2012/05/100-shockingly-short-io-domain-names-available-today.html https://iwantmyname.com/blog/2012/05/100-shockingly-short-io... 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 13y agoThis is from a few minutes ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5663917 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5663917
- muloka 13y agoHa you beat me to it.
- andyhmltn 13y agoJust a note: That list may be out of date. I see my domain (fry.io) on there, and I registered that a good few months ago :p
- Gertig 13y agoNot sure why it's lame for it to cost $20, is it because you could build it yourself?
- samstave 13y agoALL domains available on all TLDs should be listed freely. Charging for access to information like this is deplorable. Just because you can does not mean you should.
- bobwaycott 13y agoPosting the same comment 4 times trying to sell a list is just ridiculous. One comment was enough.
- Gertig 13y agoYeah, it was probably a little much. The site has been up for quite a long time and I thought it might useful given the circumstances. Should I have linked to it more than once? Probably not.
- muloka 13y agoProcessed the Scrabble dictionary for all 3-letter words acceptable in U.S. Club and Tournament Play as of 2009. Among which 283 are available .io domains: https://gist.github.com/muloka/5527116 https://gist.github.com/muloka/5527116
- joelrunyon 13y agoDo it.
- samstave 13y agoPlease bring it back. Some time ago I was trying to register an .io domain - but my bank would not allow the transaction because fraud :( I still want one...
- Xcelerate 13y agoAlright, I just submitted it to HN (page 2 of the homepage now). All I ask is if you think it's useful, upvote it :)
- guiambros 13y agoHere's the discussion, to save others a few clicks: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5663793 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5663793 Thanks for doing it (and putting it back online). Really useful if you're looking for a quick .io inspiration.
- colbyh 13y agoI just generated a list of all the 3 letter scrabble-legal .io domains available (4 letter domains are going as we speak). Any interest?
- colbyh 13y agohttp://pastebin.com/37WFgSKv http://pastebin.com/37WFgSKv and http://pastebin.com/mjzvwiBF http://pastebin.com/mjzvwiBF if anyone feels like browsing.
- fredsted 13y agoThere's also http://two.vg http://two.vg, they don't list .io domains though.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- kintamanimatt 13y agoWow, someone at Google finally successfully championed the cause! Thanks to whoever you are if you're reading this.
- shloime 13y agoWow! They actually listened. Who would have thought..
- stephanos2k 13y agoI'm amazed at how fast this was done, seems like only weeks ago several people suggested this.
- ceejayoz 13y agoIt 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- 13y agoBased on their reluctance to put Google Code out of its misery, its sometimes hard to believe they might be aware. :)
- benackles 13y agoIt'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 13y agoI doubt https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.0.0/jquery.min.js https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.0.0/jquery.mi... would go away if Google Code did.
- daok 13y agoMay I know what does it do to be in the gccTLD list? Does it changes something for those website?
- xSwag 13y agoIt means that it's treated the same as a .com and no longer treated as an Indian Ocean-specific website I believe.
- mhaymo 13y agoIt 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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.io
- xSwag 13y agoThat'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.
- outside1234 13y agoThank you Google!
- purephase 13y agonic.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.
- jqueryin 13y agoI believe it's also a good preparation for the domain extensions that'll be releasing out in the wild later this year. There's hundreds in contention. It could heavily factor into Google's "Did you mean domain.com?" handling where they assume you searched incorrectly for an alternate gTLD, cTLD, or ccTLD in some cases.
- adanto6840 13y agoYeah, my thoughts exactly... I've got to think that they'll see a pretty big influx of .io registrations today & over the next few days, I'm sure they're thrilled. I also have the same reservations too, though -- although I applaud the reaction & speed, a big part of me wonders if it's really best suited for decisions like this. What happens when some other TLD needs to be re-categorized the same? Where does it stop? Is there any precedent to Google removing a domain from their 'gccTLD' list? That'd be more scary / have a bigger potential impact on people I'd assume -- although I suppose they could just 'tweak' the TLD to not rank quite as high without doing as much publicly like this perhaps...
- evaneykelen 13y agoJust recently these names were still available while checking names for a project: feature.io, using.io, edges.io, advan.io, gains.io, plain.io, dest.io and nippy.io. I haven't checked if they were still available as of today so YMMV.
- jevinskie 13y agoI'm interested in your relation to the territories, if you don't mind me asking?
- jurassic 13y agoI hope prices stay "high"; maybe $55+/yr is enough to keep the domain squatters in check to some extent.
- kijin 13y ago.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.
- unreal37 13y agoI think prices for .com/.net should go up too. Too many domain squatters and advertising-only domains. If it was $50 a year, some good names might become available for real businesses.
- bdcravens 13y agoOr just regular registration. I have near 100 that I registered with good intention. Then I get distracted and later I'll look at my list and be amazed at the quality of the names I have. Nothing that I could sell for much, but that would be great memorable names for a service or company. They're so cheap that it's no big deal (at least in bite size chunks), but the truth is I'm locking it up for an entrepreneur with the time and motivation.
- DanBlake 13y agoSort of surprised .ly is missing. Maybe related to the conflict over there, because it was/is pretty widely used by startups
- Gertig 13y agoThis 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 http://andio.herokuapp.com EDIT: was.io and mph.io have been purchased since posting this comment, now 38 left.
- ambiate 13y agoI was shocked to see 'hey.io' was just bought today.
- Gertig 13y agoYeah, there are some really interesting words that have been available way longer than I thought they would be.
- nanijoe 13y agoIf you are no longer selling the list, can you show it on your site? When you say 3 letter domains, are you referring to dictionary words or any random 3 letter?
- Gertig 13y agoStill selling the list. I meant it was unsuccessful because only 6 people bought it :) I mean english dictionary words and common acronyms, not random 3 letter combinations.
- silent1mezzo 13y agoWould really like to see this happen with .ly domains too.
- stevenklein 13y agoWhat will the SEO effects of this be to existing .io site?
- purephase 13y agoI 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.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- iand 13y agoWhat's the attraction of the .io domain? Seeing it crop up in many places and I'm not sure what the significance is.
- sim0n 13y agoPeople treat it as though the io stands for input/output (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input/output http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input/output).
- coin 13y agoI have yet to see an input/output related .io site
- corford 13y agoredis.io ?
- LyndsySimon 13y agosockets.io? aspen.io? Just off the top of my head.
- adanto6840 13y agoI've just assumed that it tends to imply 'technology' via the long-existing term "I/O" [input/output]. Even the businesses that that use it and are less tech-heavy in business model tend to be web- and/or mobile-first type companies from what I've seen...
- tomchuk 13y agoIn 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.
- xur17 13y agoI'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 13y agoI'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.
- coin 13y agoTo me, .io brings to mind just another junky spam site.
- donretag 13y agoMaybe 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/ http://www.macch.io/
- n00btroll 13y agoActually you can direct macch.io to www.macch.io. Iremember doing it for one of my domain which was hosted on AppEngine.
- highace 13y agoI 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.
- Gertig 13y agoWhile I agree that .io will likely not be seen the same way .com is by your average customer it may not be that much of an issue if Google starts ranking .io domain names highly in search results. Which is how many people choose what sites to visit or buy from.
- derefr 13y ago> .io will never be as 'accepted' as .com by Billy Customer It's seemed to me that all the uses of .io so far are precisely for sites only developers will have any reason to visit--software libraries, B2B SaaS, etc.
- kmfrk 13y agoIt 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_ 13y ago> 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.
- Dramatize 13y agoI've always thought the .io is much better than .co .co seems too much like a miss-spelling of .com
- vizzah 13y agoGoogle, .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_ 13y agoI can't think of anything that uses .im, what am I forgetting?
- chrisballinger 13y agohttp://www.pidgin.im http://www.pidgin.im and http://www.adium.im http://www.adium.im
- vizzah 13y agowell, if it doesn't seem to be adopted by a prominent start-up (yet), doesn't mean that the extension is not popular for it's obvious non-geo "I am" meaning. It is one of those novelty extensions and Google should also allow webmasters to choose whether to treat it as gTLD or as a micro state of 'Isle of Man'.
- Semaphor 13y agohttp://goo.im http://goo.im
- EvanKelly 13y agohttp://imo.im http://imo.im
- pagekicker 13y agoso what?
- Gertig 13y agoYou can buy the list of 30 remaining three letter words/common acronyms for $19: http://andio.herokuapp.com 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
- omegote 13y agoHipsters win
- dangoldin 13y agoInteresting. 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.
- c3o 13y agoDid 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.
- intrawl 13y agoIs there any way to register an io domain without your address and phone number showing up in the whois information?
- vincentmac 13y agoTry 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 13y agoThanks, 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 13y agoI 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).
- bobwaycott 13y agoCurrently available as-of-this-moment 3-letter .io domain names: http://pastie.org/7809651 http://pastie.org/7809651
- RKearney 13y agoI just bought a 2 letter .io. At the time of this comment, there are only 2 left.
- smallegan 13y agoMark this day next year to check for good expired .io domain names :-)
- xur17 13y ago+~3 months for the grace period to expire.
- lubos 13y agoI'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 13y agoWhere did you get "6 months" from?
- lubos 13y agoI 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.
- programminggeek 13y agoI 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?
- jeremymcanally 13y agoExcellent. I'm prepping to launch http://rss.io 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 13y agoGreat 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!
- melvinmt 13y agoHmm.. might be a good time to put my translation.io domain to good use.
- gadders 13y agoThis has inspired me to buy another .by domain, just on the offchance...