Yeah! That’s true. You can now call .tk a real free top level domain as it has started giving away free dns service. The domain forwarding service that redirects .tk url to your current sub-domain is still there. But it’s bad for SEO. But recently they have added free dns service option to it. That means if you want you can use your existing Name Servers to point them to your domain or you can use free dns service from Dot TK to point your own ip address to your new .tk domain.
So you don’t have to use frames now and your content will be properly mapped with your domain urls. And will be shown properly in search engines for all of your different pages giving you normal SEO benefits.
In my previous post few days ago, I mentioned ICANN was going to held a meeting to decide the fate of sites still on .yu domain. And the latest news is that, ICANN has extened the deadline for switching off .yu domains to another 6 months, till 30 March 2010. But it will annnounce some conditions subsequently. And if that conditions are acceptable, then Register of the Serbian National Internet Domain (RNIDS) will make a decision on the switching off the remaining 4000 .yu domain sites.
Today I stumbled on to an interesting piece of news. Sites with Yugoslav domain .yu will no longer be available from tomorrow, 30th September. Actually ICANN removed .yu domain from the list of approved country domain names in 2006, but they still continued to support it to give extra time for sites to transfer to a different domain. Now they have decided that the time has come. They have a simple & fair reason, it should be appropriate to use .me or .rs domian (respectively for Montenegro & Serbia) as Republic of Yugoslavia has been broken into these two countries 
But the interesting thing is that about 4,000 sites are still on .yu domain. That’s why Serbian National Register of Internet Domain Names has asked ICANN to consider to extend the time. ICANN is going to have a meeting about that.
By the way, if you are interested about history, .yu domain was first assigned to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1989. Then with the start of Balkan war, the domain was held by newly independent Slovenia before eventually getting passed to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1994. But as many of you know, Republic of Yugoslavia itself got renamed to Serbia and Montenegro in 2003, and Montenegro breaking out of the union in 2006, the history surely looks a bit clumsy 
In April, I wrote a blog post about .co.cc asking for renewal payments. It was like cheating regular .co.cc users who started using it knowing it would remain free. Recently I noticed that .co.cc has updated & clarified their policy to some extent. If you are using the domain for personal, non-commercial purposes only then you don’t have to pay renewal fees. You can use it for free as long as you wish. That’s certainly a good news to the general user base of this domain. However if you use it for commercial purpose, you can register .co.cc for free but have to pay renewal fee each year. The current renewal fee is $3 per year. But I doubt how many users use it for commercial purpose & if it is really good idea to use such a free domain for commercial sites.
Forget about everything. If you were scratching your head for why you fell for free domains like .co.cc, you can have a sigh of relief for the moment.
Yeah! You can get a free .com domain name for one year & there are no strings attached. Register.com, one of the most trusted domain registrar is giving away this promotional offer. Actually the offer has been available for a long time. It is said to be for small business. But I contacted the support & they told me that anyone can register with valid info. And you can transfer your domain without having to pay them. Probably you will transfer at the end of the year, as the renewal fee is $35 for Register.com. So it’s better to transfer the domain to GoDaddy or NameCheap. But remember, it usually takes about 5 days to transfer a domain between domain registrars. So don’t leave it too late to avoid any complicacy. Start the process a week or two prior to the domain expiry date.
You have to verify your credit card or PayPal info. While registering you can turn off automatic renewal to prevent getting charged accidentally. Here is the screenshot where you can turn off “Automatic SafeRenew”:
You can register any domain name with .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz or .us extension. But remember you can register only one domain per account.
Did you notice the policy change? Look before you settle for a free .co.cc domain. It is not free for life anymore. You can still register it for free but only for a year. Then you have to pay for renewals. Here is what they have to say in the FAQ:
1. Can I use my free domain forever? 
No, the free domain is available for only first year.
If you want to keep the free domain after a year, you should pay for it. |
I was doing a bit of search about it. Currently you have to pay $3 for each year renewal. You can renew for more years at a cheaper rate though. Here is the rate:
- 1 year – $3
- 2 years – $5
- 3 years – $7
- 4 years – $9
- 5 years – $10
I can’t see any point of using them anymore. If you have to pay later, why not pay now & buy a genuine TLD. Do you know the worst thing? They are asking the existing account holders to pay for their old domains renewal. Poor users! They thought it is free for life & put their hard work building and promoting a site under .co.cc. But they have to pay from now. They would curse their luck why didn’t they start a site on a proper TLD. This is mean from .co.cc!
.mx ccTLD was launched in 1989 in Mexico. But it was only available for limited registrations to schools & universities. Others had to use sub-extensions like .com.mx or .net.mx etc. As .edu.mx sub-extension was introduced for school & colleges during 1996, .mx domain got disappeared from the seen in 1997. Now after 20 years of its initial launch it is going to be relaunched publicly.
Like others it has also a sunrise period & a landrush period. Here is the registration schedule:
- Pre-registration period (May 01 to July 31, 2009 ): If you own domain name with any of the five .mx sub-extensions (.com.mx, .net.mx, .org.mx, .edu.mx, .gob.mx), you can register the corresponding name under .mx extension. If the name is same for two or more applications, the name will be registered under the owner of the oldest sub-extension.
- Quiet period (August 01 to August 31, 2009): The applications received during pre-registration will be further processed.
- Initial registration period (September 01 to October 31, 2009): .mx domain will be open to every one for registration on a first come first served basis.
If you want to buy a domain via unverified Paypal account, then go to Namecheap.com & buy it. They are the only one, that i have found, that accept fund from unverified Paypal account. When i started blogging few years back & got some money in my unverified Paypal, i wanted to buy a domain. I have searched a lot & found only them to rescue me.
Not only that, they are one of the most reliable domain registrars in the business just like GoDaddy & ICANN-Accredited too. Enjoy all the facilities & great service without getting verified in Paypal.
Free domain! That really can attract you as a newbie. But read before you use one. Most of the free domains are nothing but url redirection services. They will give you a nice little url instead of your long one.
But url redirection creates framed webpage. That’s where the trouble comes from. Search engines like Google or Yahoo cannot crawl through the content of a framed webpage. They will just index the title, meta keywords & description.
If you run a blog, just think what will happen. You write dynamic content. But not a single post will get indexed. People will search keywords of your post but they cannot find your blog in search results. No matter how good your PR is, you won’t get value for that.
.TK is no exception. It’s a free TLD but only with url redirection. If you want real free domain, you can use .uni.cc or .co.cc. They are not TLDs but second level domains. They come with dns service. If you can be happy with .co.in or .co.uk, then .co.cc for free won’t be that bad.
Godaddy is selling .me domain just for $14.95 per year. It attracted me & I searched the net to find some interesting aspects that you should consider before buying one.
Thousands of .me domains have been sold like hot cakes in USA. But let me clarify that it is not a generic TLD but a ccTLD. It is assigned to the Republic of Montenegro. Seeing the prospect of this extension in English-speaking countries the authority in Montenegro started to market it as a generic namespace. You have to admit that they are quite successful in doing it.
Many quality .me sites bought in June & July have achieved pagerank & some of them have got good SERPs in US too. But there are thousands of others that haven’t even been properly configured yet. It is still too early to get into any decision. If you use quality content with local keywords & hosting with local ip you can achieve at least something in local ratings.
But the main thing is that .me domain is still a ccTLD & it is harder to achieve global targeting with it. Generally search engines tend to send more traffic from the country as the ccTLD rather than traffic from outside for a particular keyword. Even in WMT you will not find the option of geo-targeting as it is already assigned to Montenegro. WMT follows ICANN rules.
So if you are thinking of buying .me domain for long-term use as a personal site or a company site, it is just like a gamble. Montenegro is trying to make it generic TLD. If it happens in future you may have good SERPS as .com or other popular tlds. On the other hand, the hype may go down gradually making you think to switch to a popular generic TLD in a year or two.
