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The
ccTLD That Represents a Place Where No One Lives! Plus 5
More That Serve Areas With Less Than 1,000
Residents
Peter Alguacil at Pingdom.com
has a
knack for turning up very interesting tidbits of
information about the world of domains. I got a note
from him while I was in Los Angeles covering DOMAINfest
Global last week telling me about a new post
on his site detailing the most sparsely populated places
on earth that still have their own country code |
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domain
extensions. One of them even has NO residents
whatsoever. I finally got a chance to check out his
research this evening and it is interesting indeed.
Have you seen
many .hm domains around? Well, if you have
seen even one, you have seen more of them than
there are people living in the place the extension
represents - the Heard and McDonald Islands. They
are barren, uninhabited volcanic islands in the middle of
the ocean between Africa and Antarctica that
are officially a territory of Australia. Peter
noted that the primary reason that any .hm domains
have been registered at all is that .hm has been marketed
(with little success) as an abbreviation for
"home."
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Not
far behind .hm in the race for most unnecessary
ccTLD is .pn - an extension that represents the Pitcairn
Islands - a cluster of four volcanic islands in the
southern Pacific Ocean that is a former British colony.
Total population: 50. You probably have more pairs
of socks than there are people in the Pitcairn Islands!
Now let's start moving toward
the more urban centers. With a population nearly triple
that of the Pitcairns is the French Southern and
Antarctic Lands who, despite having only 140 residents,
have their own extension too - .tf. This place also
consists of a number of islands spread over a large area
in the Indian Ocean. Peter said "There is no
permanent population; merely a group of military
personnel, scientists, officials and support staff."
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Compared
to some places with
their own ccTLDs, Antarctica
is downright crowded! |
Things are
considerably more congested on the Cocos
(Keeling) Islands, another Australian
territory, where the .cc extension
represents 596 residents. As most of you
know, about a decade ago this extension was
marketed as the second coming of .com.
Unfortunately, it never quite arrived.
Two other places with
their own ccTLDs, despite having populations below
1,000 are Vatican City (826 people) represented
by .va and Ascension Island (a UK
Territory with 940 people) represented by
.ac.
Antarctica (.aq)
just misses the cut with a population of 1,000
even. Obviously, still plenty of elbow room
there and, I would imagine, some pretty decent
unused keywords. Better check first and make sure
the Nexus rules don't require you to live there
though! |
For details on several other sparsely
populated places with their own ccTLDs, check out Peter's
article which also explains how these remote
places wound up with their own domain extensions in the
first place.
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