A domain hack is a domain name that suggests a word, phrase, or name when concatenating two or more adjacent levels of that domain.[1][2][3] For example, ro.bot and examp.le, using the domains .bot and .le, suggest the words robot and example respectively. In this context, the word hack denotes a clever trick (as in programming), not an exploit or break-in (as in security).
Domain hacks offer the ability to produce short domain names. This makes them potentially valuable as redirectors, pastebins, base domains from which to delegate subdomains and URL shortening services.
History
On November 23, 1992, inter.net was registered.[4] In the 1990s, several hostnames ending in pla.net were active. The concept of spelling out a phrase with the parts of a hostname to form a domain hack became well established.[5] On Friday, May 3, 2002, icio.us was registered to create del.icio.us. Delicious would later gain control of the delicio.us domain, which had been parked since April 24, 2002, the day the .us ccTLD (country code top-level domain) was opened to second-level registrations.
Who.is[6] is a whois lookup service, indicating the registered ownership information of a domain. It was established June 12, 2002, and registered to an address in Reykjavík, Iceland.
The term domain hack was coined by Matthew Doucette on November 3, 2004, to mean "an unconventional domain name that uses parts other than the SLD (second level domain) or third level domain to create the title of the domain name."[8]
Yahoo! acquired blo.gs[9] on June 14, 2005, and del.icio.us[10] on December 9, 2005.
On September 11, 2007, name servers for .me were delegated by IANA to the Government of Montenegro, with a two-year transition period for existing .yu names to be transferred to .me. One of the first steps taken in deploying .me online was to create .its.me as a domain space for personal sites.[11] Many potential domain hacks, such as love.me and buy.me,[12] were held back by the registry as premium names for later auction.
On December 15, 2009, Google launched its own URL shortener under the domain goo.gl using the ccTLD of Greenland. YouTube subsequently launched youtu.be[13] using the ccTLD of Belgium. In 2015 Google used the domain hack abc.xyz for their newly launched Alphabet Inc.
Working with Bit.ly, The New York Times launched an URL shortener in late 2009 under the domain nyti.ms using the ccTLD of Montserrat. The need to serve shorter URLs for Twitter was cited as a reason for the shortener.[14]
In March 2010, National Public Radio launched its own URL shortener under the domain n.pr using the ccTLD of Puerto Rico.[15] The n.pr domain is currently used to link to an NPR story page by its ID and is one of the shortest possible domain hacks.
In late 2010, Apple launched a URL shortener at the domain itun.es, using the ccTLD of Spain, in a similar move to Google's goo.gl. Unlike goo.gl, which was public and could be used for any web address, itun.es is used only for iTunes Ping URL shortening.
Spotify also uses the URL Shortenerspoti.fi, using the ccTLD of Finland, to link to artist, partners, playlists, albums and songs. Flickr uses flic.kr for their URL shortening, using the ccTLD of South Korea.[16]ta.co redirects to Taco Bell’s official website.[17] In 2006, Red Bull GmbH registered the domain win.gs to use for shortened URLs.[18][19]
International examples
In most cases, registration of these short domain names relies on the use of country code top-level domains (ccTLDs), each of which has a unique two-letter identifier.
Many people use domain hacks for their name to serve their personal website. Some prominent examples include: rome.ro (John Romero), melan.ie (Melanie C), sive.rs (Derek Sivers) and nav.al (Naval Ravikant).
Domain hacking is not limited to single words. For example, helpmelearn.it uses the ccTLD for Italy to write out "help me learn it". While there is technically no restriction, these domain hacks tend to limit themselves to using only ccTLDs that are words in-and-of-itself, such as the aforementioned Italy as well as Iceland (.is) and Montenegro (.me).
Libya's ccTLD (.ly) has been used for English words that end with suffix "ly", such as sil.ly or former musical.ly. Popular URL shortening services bit.ly, brief.ly, name.ly and ow.ly use this hack. In 2010, the Libyan registry suspended vb.ly, an adult oriented .ly link shortener.[21]
After a legal fight to allow so, the Moldovan ccTLD (.md) has been used by doctors and medical companies due to its resemblance to the abbreviation MD, used by those holding a Doctor of Medicine degree.[22] It has also been used by websites relating to the Markdown markup language (such as Obsidian, obsidian.md) which uses .md as its file extension.
The American Samoa domain .as is popular in countries where AS or A/S (Aktieselskab/Aksjeselskap) is the legal suffix for stock-based corporations in Denmark and Norway, so companies of those countries frequently employ it.
In Turkish, "biz" means "we", and can be used for emphasis at the end of "we are" sentences.
Family names in many Slavic languages written in internationalized variant end with ch (i.e. -ich, -vich, -vych, -ovich). This ch comes from Slavic "ć", "č", "ч", or "ћ". Therefore, the Swiss .chccTLD is an option. Another use case of .ch is for English words that end in ch, e.g. tech, punch, search, crunch, rich. Examples of such domains are codesear.ch, freshte.ch, and swit.ch.
Since the introduction of .eu domains (eu meaning "I" in Romanian, Galician and Portuguese), these domains have become popular in Romania, with people registering their names with the .eu extension.[citation needed] Before the .eus domain was introduced, .eu was also widely used by websites from the Basque Country, as it resembled the word euskera (meaning Basque).
In French, Italian and Portuguese, là or lá mean "there". As the .la domain (Laos) is available for second-level registration worldwide, this can be an easy way to get a short, catchy name such as "go there". In Italy some TLDs are identical to Italian Provinces' identifier, such as .to (Turin) or .tv (Treviso) and are thus extensively used for web domains in the area. The Canadian domain .ca is also trivial to use as cá or cà ("here"), respectively in Portuguese and Neapolitan, or ça ("that"), in French; however, unlike some countries, Canada's .ca registrar requires local Canadian presence to use this domain.
Hungarian domains sometimes use the Moroccan top level domain .ma (meaning "today").
A fad amongst French-speakers was to register their names in the Niue TLD .nu, which in French and Portuguese means "nude" or "naked"; however, as of 2007[update], Niue authorities have revoked many of these domain names. The handful that remain are joke domains without actual nudity. French speakers often use the Jersey TLD .je, since "je" means "I" in French. In addition, .je is used in the Netherlands, as it can mean both "you" or "your". The addition of -je to most nouns also produces a diminutive form (e.g. huis.je, or the defunct iPhone app feest.je (feestje meaning "party").[23]
Likewise, Dutch, Swedish, and Danish speakers sometimes use .nu, because it means "now" in these languages. The TLD is still used by many Swedish sites, as prior to 2003 it was impossible for individuals (and difficult for organizations) to register arbitrary domains under the .se TLD.
English words that end with the "rs" letters (cars, fixers, powers... etc.) provide means for another popular domain hack which utilizes the Serbian .RS domain extension.
In Russian, net (as нет, or nyet transliterated character for character) means "no" or "there isn't," so there are many domains in the format something.net (e.g. redaktora.net meaning "[there is] no editor"). There are many words ending with ga (Cyrillic: га), including some highly popular (книга/kniga meaning book, дорога/doroga meaning road). Gabon's .ga domain is free for registration, which has led to wide adoption of such domain hacks.
In Czech, Polish and Slovak, to means "it", so there are many domains using Tonga's .to in the format "do-something.to" (e.g., zrobie.to, meaning "I will do it" in the Polish language or prestahujeme.to meaning "We will move it" as Slovak moving service). Notably, Czech file sharing service uloz.to was founded in 2007, and its name "ulož to" means "save it".
In Czech as well, se and si are particles markings reflexive verbs, therefore the Sweden's and Slovenia's TLDs are used for domain hacks, such as a taxi service svez.se (for "have a ride") or a game server hraj.si ("play") albeit the latter ones are no more available for new registration for non-Slovenian entities (see paragraph below).
In Slovenian, si is a dative form of the reciprocal personal pronoun and a second person form of the verb to be. As .si is a Slovenian ccTLD, domain hacks are abundant. Additionally, the domain is attractive to speakers of Romance languages, because it is a conjunction, pronoun or an affirmative interjection in many. ARNES limits the use of the domain to residents and entities of Slovenia.
In Spanish and Portuguese, ar is the ending of the infinitive of many verbs, so hacks with Argentina's TLD .ar are common (e.g., educ.ar, meaning "to educate"). Similarly, another such verb suffix is ir, TLD of Iran.
In Kurdish, "im" means "I am", so it's possible to make meaningful domains for personal purposes with the Isle of Man TLD .im. For example, rebaz.im would mean "Rêbaz im", which translates to "I am Rêbaz".
Some registries allow Emoji in domains, permitting the creation of emoji domains. Many browsers display these domains as punycode for security reasons.
With the rise of new TLDs, some companies have registered entire TLDs in order to create a hack for their name. Most prominent is .gle, created for Google to be used as goo.gle.
In the Internet, a domain name is a string that identifies a realm of administrative autonomy, authority or control. Domain names are often used to identify services provided through the Internet, such as websites, email services and more. Domain names are used in various networking contexts and for application-specific naming and addressing purposes. In general, a domain name identifies a network domain or an Internet Protocol (IP) resource, such as a personal computer used to access the Internet, or a server computer.
.to is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) of the Kingdom of Tonga.
A country code top-level domain (ccTLD) is an Internet top-level domain generally used or reserved for a country, sovereign state, or dependent territory identified with a country code. All ASCII ccTLD identifiers are two letters long, and all two-letter top-level domains are ccTLDs.
.ag is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Antigua and Barbuda.
.as is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for American Samoa. It is administered by AS Domain Registry. Island Networks, which provides registry services for .gg and .je, is also responsible for the technical operations of .as.
.be is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Belgium. In November 2022, there were 1,746,459 registered domain names using it.
.ch is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Switzerland in the Domain Name System of the Internet. Made available in 1987, only two years after .com, it is administered by SWITCH Information Technology Services.
.ws is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Samoa. It is administered by SamoaNIC, for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Government of Samoa.
.es (españa) is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Spain. It is administered by the Network Information Centre of Spain.
.dm is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the Commonwealth of Dominica in the eastern Caribbean. Registrants of a second-level .dm domain get the corresponding third-level names within .com.dm, .net.dm and .org.dm automatically included. There are no restrictions on who can register these names, but they are not very heavily used.
.re is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Réunion. Along with .fr, .tf, and .ovh, it is administered by AFNIC.
.gl is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) in the Domain Name System of the Internet for Greenland. The domain is available for Internet services worldwide and registrations are handled by ICANN-accredited domain name registrars.
.si is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Slovenia. It is administered by the ARNES, the Academic and Research Network of Slovenia. In 2010, the registry hosted 80,000 domain names. In 2012, that number increased to 100,000. In 2022 this number crossed 150,000.
.la is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Laos.
.ly is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Libya.
.st is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for São Tomé and Príncipe. The code is marketed worldwide as an abbreviation for various entities.
URL shortening is a technique on the World Wide Web in which a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) may be made substantially shorter and still direct to the required page. This is achieved by using a redirect which links to the web page that has a long URL. For example, the URL "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL_shortening" can be shortened to "https://w.wiki/U". Often the redirect domain name is shorter than the original one. A friendly URL may be desired for messaging technologies that limit the number of characters in a message, for reducing the amount of typing required if the reader is copying a URL from a print source, for making it easier for a person to remember, or for the intention of a permalink. In November 2009, the shortened links of the URL shortening service Bitly were accessed 2.1 billion times.
.me is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Montenegro.
Bitly is a URL shortening service and a link management platform. The company Bitly, Inc. was established in 2008. It is privately held and based in New York City. Bitly shortens 600 million links per month, for use in social networking, SMS, and email. Bitly makes money by charging for access to aggregate data created as a result of many people using the shortened URLs.
Country code top-level domains with commercial licenses are Internet country code top-level domain that have adopted a policy for worldwide commercial use.
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