On the 25th of March 2006 I published a list of popular top level domain names (TLD) and the number of pages hosted on each TLD. When Xavier Media some time later started counting the number of pages on a regular basis for Xavier Media Whois Database (can be found at whois.xaviermedia.com) we noticed a slow drop in rank for the Swedish top level domain (.se).

On the 25th of March 2006 the .se TLD was found on the 14th place on the list, but on the toplist from today (11th of December 2007) the .se TLD is only on 21st place! Is the .se domain loosing ground to other top level domains? I would say yes. The .com TLD is really popular in many countries and also in Sweden. The .nu domain is not as popular as it used to be (years ago), but it’s still being used for web sites (nu is the Swedish word for now).

It’s going to be interesting to see if this development continues….

/Andreas

Here’s todays TOP 40:

Number of pages hosted on TLD domains 2007/12/11:
1. .com - 17 800 000 000 pages
2. .org - 2 190 000 000 pages
3. .jp - 2 120 000 000 pages
4. .net - 1 610 000 000 pages
5. .de - 1 410 000 000 pages
6. .cn - 934 000 000 pages
7. .ru - 886 000 000 pages
8. .uk - 840 000 000 pages
9. .edu - 601 000 000 pages
10. .it - 395 000 000 pages
11. .nl - 361 000 000 pages
12. .pl - 294 000 000 pages
13. .fr - 280 000 000 pages
14. .tw - 276 000 000 pages
15. .gov - 261 000 000 pages
16. .us - 246 000 000 pages
17. .ca - 240 000 000 pages
18. .au - 232 000 000 pages
19. .info - 163 000 000 pages
20. .ch - 160 000 000 pages
21. .se - 152 000 000 pages
22. .dk - 130 000 000 pages
23. .br - 130 000 000 pages
24. .at - 121 000 000 pages
25. .es - 116 000 000 pages
26. .be - 112 000 000 pages
27. .no - 109 000 000 pages
28. .hk - 86 800 000 pages
29. .fi - 79 200 000 pages
30. .hu - 73 600 000 pages
31. .cc - 64 700 000 pages
32. .nz - 55 200 000 pages
33. .biz - 51 500 000 pages
34. .ar - 47 900 000 pages
35. .tv - 47 600 000 pages
36. .eu - 44 700 000 pages
37. .il - 44 200 000 pages
38. .za - 35 500 000 pages
39. .gr - 34 300 000 pages
40. .th - 30 700 000 pages

46. .nu - 22 800 000 pages

Source: Xavier Media

I saw a post about that some time ago in a webmaster forum. Since I myself own a couple of .us domains and I also got a lot of other country code domain names I started doing some research on this subject.

Field study 1: I started my research by visiting one of the biggest .us sites, del.icio.us, and selected the first two keywords I could find on their site: social bookmarking. I then pointed by browser to Google and entered “social bookmarking” (without the “”) in the search field. As number two in the search result I found del.icio.us, so I guess that’s acceptable.

Field study 2: I visited another big .us web site, mon.itor.us, and did the same thing as with del.icio.us but using the keywords “free websites performance”. The results where almost as good as in the case of del.icio.us because I found mon.itor.us as number three in the search results. I did another search, but this time for just “websites performance” and mon.itor.us was found as number four in the results.

These two field studies show us that it’s possible to build a successful and high ranking website using a .us domain name . It shouldn’t be any different if you use a .uk, .se, .dk, .eu or whatever top level domain for your site.

If you got more examples of successful and high ranking .us websites, please feel free to let me know

/Andreas

The .SU top level domain (TLD) was used by the Soviet Union until its dissolution in 1991. Since all two characters top level domain names must be mentioned in the ISO 3166-1 standard as a country code, why is .SU still active?

I don’t think anyone got a really good answer to that question, but it looks like ICANN wants to retire the .SU TLD because they have been in contact with the .SU operators.

I can understand if a TLD lives longer then a country since it got registered domain names, but I can’t understand why a TLD like .SU still accepts new applications.

Lets just hope that all the .SU domain owners can find a new TLD like .RU (Russia) or .UA (Ukraine) if .SU is really retired.

/Andreas

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Now you can get listed in our UK directory completely free, all that’s required is a link back to our site. If you don’t want to link back to us you can of course add your site anyway for as little as $1. Visit www.xaviermedia.co.uk for more information or to find some useful web sites

Why do you need to add your site in our directory?

The more web sites that link to your site the higher PageRank you get, and the higher PageRank you get the higher up in the search results your site will show up, the higher up in the search results your site end up the more people will find your site and buy your products or services Directories are good