Regulation benefits reputation
This very simple, and extremely effective, management and regulation of the top-level domain has qualified dot-IE as a respected and trustworthy domain in the eyes of Google and other online visitors.
Google gives dot-IE addresses priority in the search results as there is understanding that behind the ‘.ie’ is a valid organisation. Shoppers trust dot-IE as genuinely Irish because the international market wasn’t flooded with ‘.ie’ domains. If the domain appears to have been sold, except as part of the sale of a business, or the domain is neglected, then IEDR may delete the domain within five working days’ notice.
Starting a business in Ireland comes with this little-known but significant benefit of being able to avail of a reputable online presence. Moves are also afoot to ensure that modern browsers such as Chrome and Firefox can display the fada in the address bar.
Register your Dot-IE domain today
Why should I choose a .ie domain?
Anyone who has attempted to register a dot-com web address for their organisation knows that the good ones are always taken. Those savvy enough to register ‘hotels.com’ or ‘mortgages.com’ in the nineties will have sold them on by now for seven figures.
If you are going for something short and snappy then you’re out of luck as all the three and four-letter dot-com domains are registered, and any five or six-letter dot-com that is worth the €10 registration fee may also be sitting in cyberspace with a generic website ‘squatting’ on it.
Top-level domains
Almost all other top-level domains (TLDs) such as ‘.eu’ or ‘.co.uk’ suffered a similar fate. The valuable dictionary words are registered so fast it seems automatic. Anything of value is reserved for domain auctions where the asking prices go far beyond your start-up budget.
In an effort to raise funds, Tokelau – a self-governed territory of New Zealand – released most of its ‘.tk’ domains for free to the public, except those such as the trademarks of Fortune 500 companies and other valuables. The plan backfired when dot-TK became infamous for scam and phishing websites.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) also approved the ‘.eu’ TLD in 2005, although the EU is not a country (it is a sui generis intergovernmental and supranational organisation). A landrush on the dot-EU domains caused their reputation and value to plummet, and EU institutions such as the European Central Bank stray away from ‘.eu’ and use ‘.europa.eu’ instead.
Source: How regulation draws success from the dot-IE domain
This is an extract from the winning entry to its Student Writing Contest, written by Stephen Lynam, a student at Maynooth University
