Distribution Of IE Domains - 16.974% Unique

The .ie ccTLD is an unusual ccTLD because historical mismanagement restricted its growth. But over the past year or so, it is beginning to turn into a modern ccTLD despite a complete absence of domain industry expertise on the board of IEDR. One of the primary reasons for this growth is the reduction in the cost of .ie domains. Another is the relaxation of regulations governing the registration of .ie domains though this has led to abuses with abusive registrations.

WhoisIreland.com produces hosting statistics reports for the domain industry covering domain registration in com/net/org/biz/info/ie/eu TLDs and using these databases, a comparison was done on the terms and keywords registered in .ie and in com/net/org/info/biz. The results are interesting because they show how a ccTLD stacks up against the gTLDs.

16.974% - .ie unique
18.226% - .com/.ie
15.085% - .com/.net/.org/.info/.biz/.ie
5.640% - .com/.net/.ie
3.632% - .com/.net/.org/.ie
2.677% - .com/.net/.org/.info/.ie
1.522% - .com/.net/.org/.biz/.ie
1.156% - .com/.org/.ie
(percentages below 1% not included)

Approximately 52.186% of the .ie domains have equivalents in the com/net/org/biz/info gTLDs. 30.794% of .ie domains also have equivalents in .eu/.com/.net/.org/.biz/.info gTLDs based on approximately 70% of .eu domains mapped.

Perhaps the most unusual aspect of this is that 16.947% of the .ie domains are not found in eu/com/net/org/biz/info gTLDs. If this pattern is repeated across other ccTLDs then it could have some rather strange effects on search engine results. Some search engines still use the url in the computation of the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). And having a unique domain name could potentially help in the position of a site in the SERPs.

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Written by John McCormac on August 21st, 2006 with comments disabled.
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10 comments

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Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com Richard Hearne
#1. August 21st, 2006, at 8:34 AM.

In terms of the abuse of .ie domains, what have you come across?

Just wondering if you know of any spam / MFA sites on .ie domains?

Rgds

Richard

Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com John McCormac
#2. August 21st, 2006, at 8:50 AM.

They are becoming more frequent Richard,
Initially it was a few using Dmoz data without attribution. But they were joined by themed (generally banking/creditcard) MFAs. The EUbrowser squatters (nike/adidas/bebo/police etc) now represent the biggest MFA grouping in .ie with approximately 508 .ie domains.

Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com Richard Hearne
#3. August 21st, 2006, at 1:45 PM.

Curious - does anyone know what they [EUbrowser] are up to?

I cant see how they are profiting from this unless digiweb are shelling out big bucks for that small ad?

Seems all they do is redirect those .ie domains to their site?

Do you have any ideas what they are up to? Is it just pure domain-squatting?

Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com John McCormac
#4. August 21st, 2006, at 4:22 PM.

Danny,
MFA= Made For Adsense. eubrowser.com is the doamin of the nameservers that the Gabor/Petho squatters (squatters of bebo.ie/police.ie/adidas.ie/nike.ie etc)are now using. They used to host their .ie domains on irishdomains.net and hosting365.ie but moved them in the last two months.

Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com John McCormac
#5. August 21st, 2006, at 4:29 PM.

Richard,
they seem to make most of their money from Adsense advertising from type-in traffic. They have a number of highprofile brands squatted and also have a few typos of Google. Irish newspapers were also targeted and eubrowser.com still has irishindependent.ie even though it does not have any registered business name cert for the domain. The management of IEDR doesn’t seem to give a damn and ignores the problem while it pockets the registration fees. The m.o of eubrowser.com is to get RBNs for the brands they are targeting and use these to get .ie domains. How the people in IEDR ignored obvious squats like irishindependent.ie and bebo.ie should be grounds for the Minister investigating it.

Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com John McCormac
#6. August 21st, 2006, at 9:57 PM.

Michele,
I have a more cynical view of IEDR’s registration system and I think that it is classic incompetence. The management of IEDR is aware of the problem and has done nothing. It has continued to let obvious high profile squats like bebo.ie be registered. That level of mismanagement destroys IEDR’s claim to run a managed registry (as the industry understands the term). But then if you look at the board of IEDR, not one of them has any recognised experience in the domain business. How the hell would the board of IEDR even understand what kind of a problem this is?

Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com Richard Hearne
#7. August 22nd, 2006, at 7:57 AM.

eubrowser.com still has irishindependent.ie even though it does not have any registered business name cert for the domain

Has a legitimate owner ever complained about this? I presume that there would be some very red faces over at IEDR if Independent Newspaper decided to register that domain name?