Domains in the zone of the Russian Federation pros and cons. Domain names registration rules in the ONLINE zone. Country domain vs. international

ICANN Domain Name Regulatory Authority Launches New Domain Zones Program in response to popular public demand top level New gTLD. It remains only to figure out whether there is any benefit from such innovations, or is it just another way of enriching registrars.

As reported on the websites of these same registrars, ICANN has received over 2000 applications for new domain zones and in the period 2013-2015 it is planned to launch more than 500 new domains. Accepting applications for pre-registrations is in full swing. The list of new possible zones is really quite extensive - it contains geographic names like .moscow or moscow, zones suitable for business (.fashion), IT companies (.app) or media (.blog), as well as various domain zones for websites. in the direction of dating (.adult) or dedicated to animals (.dog).

On the one hand, it is good to have a choice, because now, when launching a new project, startups do not have to rack their brains and come up with cunning names in order to choose an adequate domain for them. On the other hand, there are big doubts that, for example, the Cyrillic domain.com can become at least somewhat popular.

pros

The main plus is obvious - now it will be much easier to choose an easy-to-pronounce and memorable domain name. The conventional address mycompany.app will be much more convenient for users than mycompany-topapp.com - even such a name is not so easy to register in the.com zone. Many netizens face the problem of naming.

Data: Advertising and Marketing Industry gTLD Awareness Report

In addition, there are certain conveniences in the proposed breakdown by industry - application developers, designers, companies from the world of fashion, finance and the stock market will have their own domains. This will make it easier for businesses to self-identify, and it will be easier for its customers to find what they need, rather than wading through dozens of very similar-sounding sites in the .com or .net zones.

Another big plus is the fact that the introduction of new zones should obviously hit the business of cybersquatters. Everything is logical - the more domains you can potentially choose, the more difficult it will be for squatters to steal the addresses they need from under the noses of gaping companies. And the availability of options in dozens of other zones can make squatters more accommodating when negotiating domain name redemptions.

Minuses

After all, those who think new domain names are just another way for registrars to make money are probably not so wrong. It is not in vain that entire companies are created to register domains exclusively in new zones, which then attract $ 100 million in investments, such as the registrar Donuts.

The opinion that new domains is a scam of gullible ordinary people for money is also supported by some representatives of the industry. For example, Pavel Gross-Dneprov, Managing Director of Domainy.ru LLC, recently expressed such a position on his Facebook.

In a joking manner, but similar accusations are the same thread Denis Rotanov confirmed, general manager 101domains.com:

In addition, it is not entirely clear why such a huge number of new zones should be created. Various studies, including among online marketers (who have a certain understanding of what and how the network works) indicate that most of them are not even aware of new domains, and those who have heard, believe that that their unjustifiably large number will only confuse people.

Despite the fact that the positive impact of the introduction of new zones on the problem of cybersquatting has already been noted above, it will still not be possible to completely defeat it due to the same low awareness of people about new domains. Companies in which no one knows about the existence of recently appeared domain zones, over time, may want to buy an address for their new online store, for example, in the .shop zone and feel frustration that it will already be occupied by a squatter (although, of course , and now there will be more options for maneuver).

This problem could be solved with the help of more active promotion among the broad layers of the Internet public the possibility of buying domains in new zones, which has not yet been observed on the part of ICANN.

Perspectives

Obviously, the most promising new domain zones are those related to the areas of business and entertainment. According to the results of the same survey of internet marketers, they are most impressed by the domain zone .app, .shop, .inc, .book, followed by entertainment: movie, music, .art, .home, .design, .llc. So, in the near future, the Internet will see an influx of domains like angrybirds.app and jobs.movie.

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The main question when choosing is its topic and target audience. It so happened that, focusing on Russia, there is no need to register, no matter how global and solid it may seem. Conversely, a manufacturer of cool 3D printing machines that sells them all over the world is unlikely to want his foreign potential customers to suffer with [rf]. The rest is nuance. Let's talk about them.

Top-level domains are divided into two groups: territorial-linguistic (uk, ru, rf) and thematic (info, biz, mil). This division is very arbitrary, because no one can stop you from writing about animal breeding on your own site mylittlepi.gs (this is, by the way, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands) or about politics on brexit.soccer.

: great and terrible

It is believed that the [ com] gets its name from common. In general, the idea was short for commercial, but everyone loved the zone so much that it began to be used almost everywhere, and commerce went into biz.

Dotcom (or dotcom - transcribed [ com]) is used mainly to indicate that the site is not tied to a specific territory. They are registered by large companies, well-promoted startups, popular services, online stores and others who want to show that their goods are sold to everyone.

Anyway, all thematic top-level domains are easier to transfer between registrars or sell to another person. They are not tied to the legislation of a particular country and such a process does without submitting a pile of papers to the office of the responsible office.

: how to please everyone

About domain zone [ru] there is practically nothing to say:

1. popular and time-tested - it is in the top 10 of all zones in terms of the number of sites and in the top 5 among geographic ones;

1. suitable for any topic - there are no restrictions on the placement of sites, except for those that violate Russian law;

1. ideal in Russian Central Asia - [ ru] is known to most Internet users as an identifier for Russian content, and even as an element of the symbol of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi.

There are a number of situations when you still have to use dotcom instead of the established "dotru":

• You do not want to draw up and submit an application, fiddle with passport scans for any need to change the contact details of the domain.

• You want an easy transfer between. Let's say the person who registered the domain does not answer the phone and SMS, and the renewal period has almost come to an end. Without this person, extend [ ru] will not work, and you will most likely lose the site.

• Are you afraid of the judicial system Russian Federation and think that your site will be split at the request of the local court. [ com] is not under the jurisdiction of Russian authorities, so decide for yourself

[рф]: rise and fall

Digging into myths

• Robots love [ com]

Robots love optimization. It will not work to go to the top on a golden chariot with a standard [ com]. Google states that for their search engine there is no difference between different top-level domains - all other things being equal, they all rank the same.

• You need to be in trend: [ com] - not fashionable and no one needs

Yes, you need to be fashionable, but dotcom as a three-piece suit does not go out of fashion. A huge number of new zones and the opening of old ones appear. For example, the recent boom of projects on [ co], which was chosen by 93% of startups from 2013 to 2014. And in 2015, the number of high-tech companies' websites on [ co] was a little more than 450. At the same time, the share of dot-coms is still huge - from 2010 to 2015, it was chosen by more than 20 thousand new companies - 81% of all zones. If that doesn't tell you anything, here are the data from the research company DomainTools:

You don't have to look at the colors of the diagram - it is needed to visually represent the dominance of dot-coms on the Internet.

• [rf] is progressing worse / better than [ ru]

If you follow a few simple rules, then the process of promoting a Cyrillic domain becomes the same as for any other. You can read about these rules.

Afterword

The national domain, indicating the language and geographic origin of the content, attracts the user with its relevance. By going to [ ru] or [ rf], the Russian will know that the information received can be applied to him.

On the other side, [ com] is more solid, and adding subdomains to it creates a kind of “yours / ours” framework, showing that the information is suitable for a person in a particular geographic area.

There is also a third party - legal. You can talk a lot about it: how to choose the right registrar, how the registration rules in the Russian-language domain zone are interpreted, anonymous registration or providing personal data ... But we're talking about SEO.

The possibility of registering domains in the .РФ zone appeared, for mere mortals, November 11, 2010... At the moment, you can summarize and talk about the prospects for creating sites in the zone.RF.

Which domain zone to prefer, RF or RU?

A bit of history and humor

The idea of ​​creating a zone.RF came to the head of Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev, who in 2010 served as President of the Russian Federation. Apparently, he thought that the idea was ingenious and communicative:

"The emergence of Cyrillic domains on the Internet will have important political implications."

Alas, not everyone shared Medvedev's enthusiasm:

"For example, a person needs a chair. In order not to search for a long time, he will most likely go to the Internet and type this word in Russian in the address bar - stool.rf. email address belongs. Most likely, the firm sells chairs, it turns out that it has bypassed all its competitors. "

This "secret" information on promotion, the correspondent of the first channel, Alexander Evstigneev, starts firing from 50 seconds (see video).

Alexander Evstigneev has an ironclad logic:

• A person drives "chair.rf" into the address bar because he wants to buy a chair;
• A man drives "toilet.rf" into the address bar because he wants to buy a toilet.

According to statistics from wordstat.yandex.ru, the word "chair", in the singular, is more often found in combination with the word "liquid" (43,158 impressions). In second place is the "computer chair" (28634).

Wordstat.yandex.ru statistics for the word "chair"

Based on the logic of journalists, the site chair.rf should not be a furniture theme, but a medical one 🙂

At the moment, the domain name chair.rf is for sale. The owner is ready to sell the domain for 100 thousand rubles.

Pros and cons of .РФ domains

The advantages of .РФ domains include the following:

• As a rule, remembering and spelling a domain name correctly in Cyrillic is much easier than in Latin. Let's take the name "Julia" as an example. Accordingly, the domain in the .РФ zone will look like "yulia.rf", and in the .RU zone, there will be options:
  • julija.ru
  • juliya.ru
  • yulija.ru
  • yuliya.ru
• At the moment, in the .РФ domain zone, you can pick up a more or less sonorous name. Free domains .РФ can be searched using the service provided by the registrar Reg.ru.

• If you do not install the RusToLat plugin when using a Cyrillic domain, you can get a more attractive snippet due to the fact that the highlighted keywords in the page address are written in Cyrillic.

Yandex also highlights the keywords in the URL written in the Latin alphabet, but visually, the Latin alphabet looks less attractive.

Latin URL looks less attractive

Disadvantages of .РФ domains

Unfortunately, all the advantages of .РФ domains are nullified precisely because of the Cyrillic alphabet, since the use of the Cyrillic alphabet leads to technical problems when working with sites. This is how the link to the page that we used for the previous example will look like (see the screenshot above):

httr: //xn--80ayehece2h.xn--p1ai/%d1%81%d0%be%d1%87%d0%b5%d1%82%d0%b0%d0%bd%d0%b8%d0%b5 -% d1% 86% d0% b2% d0% b5% d1% 82% d0% be% d0% b2-% d0% ba% d1% 80% d1% 8b% d1% 88% d0% b8-% d0% b8-% d0% b4% d0% be% d0% bc% d0% b0 /

xn - 80ayehece2h.xn - p1ai- this is the site address of styusam.rf, converted using Punycode (converting Unicode characters to a format supported by the DNS infrastructure). The rest of the mess is the result of the conversion of Cyrillic characters, in which each character is replaced by eight "kryakozabriki", which makes the length of the page URL too long. Default, CMS WordPress, imposes restrictions on the length of the page URL. As a result, part of the "url" can be simply cut off.

The problem is solved by converting Cyrillic to Latin (plugin RusToLat or Cyr to Lat enhanced), although the combination of Cyrillic and Latin in the browser address bar does not look the best. As an example, let's look at the site of the Cheboksary company "Informatika", which sells office equipment... The site is located on the domain informatika.rf.

The combination of Cyrillic and Latin in the browser address bar, in my opinion, does not look the best

On the official website of the President of Russia, president.rf, the Cyrillic alphabet is used in the address.

The presidential website uses Cyrillic addresses

Another pioneer of the zone of the Russian Federation, the site sex.rf, uses the Cyrillic alphabet in the address.

The site sex.rf, also uses the Cyrillic alphabet in the address

Funny events are associated with the site sex.rf. On the first day of the opening of the priority registration of Russian domains (November 25, 2009), the domain was intercepted by the CETIS studio, the copyright holder of the Sex trademark - under this brand, purses were allegedly produced for women. At the moment, the site corresponds to the domain name subject, i.e. tells the visitor about what was not in the Soviet Union 🙂

Returning to the technical side of the issue, I propose to take a look at a fragment of the report on broken links of the website stroyusam.rf, obtained using the PageWeight program (clickable).

Due to the use of the Cyrillic alphabet, it is impossible to read the link text - this can seriously complicate the life of a webmaster, especially a beginner.

What to choose, a Russian or RU domain?

In my opinion, if there is an opportunity to buy a sonorous name in the zone of the Russian Federation at a low price, then you can take it. The whole point is that you won't be able to buy cool names for 100 rubles. For example, at one time I was interested in how much the domain cat.rf costs - for the domain they requested 300,000 rubles.

The prospects for the development of the .РФ domain zone, it seems to me, are rather vague. At the moment, even novice site builders prefer to buy domains in the .RU zone rather than in.RF. Although a large number of domains in the new zone were purchased in a short time, most of them are not used, i.e. sites on these domains have not been created.

As for the attitude towards Cyrillic domains on the part of Yandex and Google, I did not notice any discrimination. A site with high-quality content is well promoted both on the .RU domain and on the .РФ domain.

As of 2017, I have four domains in the .RF zone, I am not planning to acquire new ones. I consider the zone.RU, alternative.COM, to be my priority.

Domain registration .РФ

At the moment, there are no special restrictions on registration in the RF zone. If you decide to buy a domain, you can use the services of a reseller 2domains.ru. Domains in the .РФ and .RU zones cost the same - 99 apiece.

On 2domains.ru, .РФ domains cost 99 rubles

At the moment, personally, I have no problems with 2domains.ru.

conclusions

Domain zone.RF, appeared as a result of the activities of a person who, on the one hand, is too enthusiastic modern technologies, but on the other hand, he is not very well versed in them. It is possible that over time, Cyrillic domains will be in demand not only by cyber squatters. As for Mr. Medvedev, I would like that he paid more attention to more pressing things than the creation of new domain zones.

Finally, a video on the topic from Mikhail Zadornov.

Today I decided to touch on the topic of promoting Cyrillic domains. I am very biased towards them, so the article will be subjective and will not claim to be true. In addition to my opinion, experience, and some points specified in Google, I asked a friend (owner of a Cyrillic domain) to also describe the main nuances of working with Cyrillic domains, pros and cons. As a result, a lot of information was obtained, which I will now try to structure.

What is a Cyrillic domain

So, what is a Cyrillic domain. Without going deep into the technical side, we can say that such a domain is indicated by Cyrillic characters, and is intended to improve readability and memorability. For almost 30 years of the existence of the domain name system (DNS was developed in 1984), everyone has become accustomed to domains in the Latin alphabet, the appearance of Cyrillic domain names in 2010 caused an unprecedented stir in the Internet society. Many IT specialists were skeptical about this innovation, having already seen the disadvantages of using the Cyrillic alphabet in domains. Simple web users were delighted, in the first 6 hours of the existence of the ".рф" zone, 183,000 Cyrillic domains were registered.

Cyrillic domains application

The first Cyrillic domains were president.rf and government.rf. Some time later (late 2009 - early 2010), registration of Cyrillic domain names became available to trademark owners, and later to all residents of Russia. Now there are already several dozen Cyrillic domain zones, including .ukr, .bel, and other regional and thematic domains.

Cyrillic domain names are widely used, they are used by government and private organizations, online stores, companies of any level, bloggers. Many webmasters use Cyrillic domains as additional mirrors for their websites. Companies often buy such names just to protect themselves from cybersquatting.

Advantages and disadvantages

Using Cyrillic domains has its pros and cons. For me personally, there are much more disadvantages (including both objective and subjective factors), however, I honestly tried to find at least something in favor of Cyrillic domains. Let's try to list both.

Benefits of Cyrillic Domains

1. Cyrillic domain is easy to read and remember... There is information that such domains are created just for people who do not understand transliteration and English very well.
2. Possibility to add keywords to the domain, without using transliteration. IMHO, this point is not very unambiguous, did not observe a pronounced dependence of the positions of the SDL on the key in the domain. Better to spend more time on proper naming.
3. Large selection of free domain names v Cyrillic zones... Whereas in the Latin alphabet for three decades there are very few "tasty" domains left - the introduction of the Cyrillic alphabet gave a chance to find such a domain for your company. However, in a few years this advantage will most likely disappear.

On this, perhaps, that's all.

Disadvantages of Cyrillic Domains

1. Some browsers copy site addresses differently... For example, in Google chrome the domain is copied to the clipboard only in Punycode, whereas Mozilla Firefox allows you to copy a domain from address bar in Cyrillic.
2. Lack of ability to create corporate mail for the domain. Unfortunately, Cyrillic domains cannot yet be correctly used to create a postal address. You can only use the address in Punycode. For example, instead of “ [email protected] domain.рф ", the address will look like" [email protected]". Agree, not very convenient. True, Google not so long ago announced the beginning of support for the Cyrillic alphabet in mail addresses, but until it will be correctly perceived by postal services and other search engines will start to support it (in Runet, of course, the main mail for the domain is from Yandex) - it will take more than one year.
3. Possible problems when working with link exchanges in particular GGL (GoGetLinks). The fact is that part of the site address (domain name) is transformed into Punycode, and the page / folder / resource address (URL) itself is transmitted in the Unicode hexadecimal system (UTF-8, as a rule). As a result, the addresses can be very, very long, and due to the limitations of the exchange systems, there can be problems.
4. CMS installation and administration can be difficult... At the moment, there should be no problems with popular CMS, but there can be difficulties with self-writing or not very well-developing systems.
5. There is information that some online antiviruses may work incorrectly with Cyrillic addresses pages.
6. Foreign Internet users will experience difficulties in accessing a website on a Cyrillic domain due to encoding problems. Today, most browsers have learned to "understand" and display Cyrillic addresses correctly, but there is no 100% guarantee.
7. It is inconvenient for an optimizer / webmaster to work with Cyrillic addresses... The specificity of our profession is such that we often have to copy page addresses, or analyze reports from various programs. URLs converted to UTF look absolutely unreadable, and you can only understand what page is by the title (without clicking on the link, of course).
8. And finally, if the Russian keyboard layout is not installed on the computer, there will be problems with entering the address... You can use a virtual keyboard, of course, but this is not always possible, and to put it mildly, not very convenient.

Conclusion

As I mentioned at the beginning, Cyrillic domains, in my understanding, have more disadvantages than vice versa. But I honestly tried to process and systematize all the information found and received through my channels so that everyone who wants to purchase such a domain could make a decision on their own. I am sure that in another year or two, the disadvantages I have described will become an order of magnitude less. But for the majority of Internet old-timers who have been working in the field of WEB for a long time, Cyrillic domains will continue to be something a little strange and ambiguous. Perhaps there are just a lot of conservatives among us 🙂

What is your opinion regarding the advantages and disadvantages of Cyrillic domains?