There has been a recent significant increase in the interest for Country Code Top Level Domains (ccTLD’s) in the past few weeks.

A lot of blogs have been featuring the pros and cons of ccTLD’s. This was inevitable, as we have had 2 recent significant developments concerning ccTLD’s, with Godaddy and its reseller sites now offering .IN domain registrations, and the announcement of the first European Traffic domain conference being dedicated to ccTLD’s.

Living in a country outside of the United States, where dot COM is not necessarily king, I had understood the value and importance of ccTLD’s from the very moment I entered the domain space. The ccTLD’s have not gained new fame or any sort of elevated status. It is simply just a case that domainers, who are mostly Americans, are now taking notice of ccTLD’s.

I can assume that living in America, one would not necessarily have the chance to fully appreciate the value and significance of ccTLD’s. The dot COM is truly the king in America. Even when America’s very own dot US ccTLD was launched, it struggled to pick up steam.

So just how valuable are ccTLD’s? We have seen sizeable domain transactions in the past involving ccTLD’s. So this is not an unexplored market. As a matter of fact, four of the top ten reported domain sales transactions for 2008 were ccTLD’s. These were:

Kredit.de – $1,169,175
Cruises.co.uk – $1,099,798
Casino.de – $$620,060
Jobs.ca – $600,000
(Source: DNJournal)

ccTLD’s have been reaping some quite success over the years. However, I have one significant problem with ccTLD’s – the language and cultural barriers.

The ccTLD is the domain extension assigned to a particular country. Here are a few examples:

.CO.UK – United Kingdom (England, Wales and Scotland)
.IN/.CO.IN – India
.CO.JP – Japan
.DE – Germany
.ES – Spain
.CN – China
.CA – Canada
.US – United States of America
.PL – Poland
.FR – France

Here in the United Kingdom, selecting dot CO.UK domains for investment or branding/development purposes is not difficult (if you have a clue about quality domain names – 90% still don’t). The United Kingdom speaks English, and would brand the dot CO.UK domain extension in the same way American s would brand the dot COM. There is however a slight spelling difference with words ending with “sation” or “zation”. Americans would spell “organisation” while the British spell “organization”.

Also Americans say “airplanes”, the British say “Aeroplanes”.

These are the only significant domaining differences that I can readily identify with the dot COM and dot CO.UK usages, in terms of language and culture.

However, with other countries, it is a whole different ball game. For one, almost all other countries, except for those that were once under the control of the British (British Commonwealth), speak a different language.

Here in the United Kingdom, different cities or regions have different accents. The difference in accent can be mind-blowing! However in some countries like India, different cities or regions speak completely different languages; so much that some people living in the same country may not understand or be able to communicate with each other.

Do you see where am going with this?

If you don’t understand the local culture or speak the local language, how do you identify gems in the ccTLD markets?

Another key point that I would like to make is not to make the mistake of registering just any English word in any TLD. For quite some time, some years ago, there was this belief that if you owned a domain name (in any extension, but more so dot COM) that was a dictionary word, the domain name would have a very high value. I registered thousands of one-word dictionary/English domain names in extensions such as .BIZ, .CC, WS etc., only to realise later that they were not so valuable. I did manage to sell quite a few, but ended dropping them by the shit loads.

This is the mistake and revelation that guided me to start eBusinessDomains.com. Regardless of the many nonsensical theories about what makes a domain name valuable, there is only one simply theory that stands out from the crowd. I call it the Universal Domain Valuation Method. The domain name must be COMMERCIAL.

So when you dig into the ccTLD market, always ask yourself this question: Would the domain name be commercial in the local market? Or simply put, would the domain name be able to successfully brand a local ebusiness?