An intriguing aspect of how Google handles .AI domains for SEO was shared by Google’s Gary Illyes. In a Google SEO Office hours session, Google’s Gary Illyes addressed the question of whether using the .AI domain could be disadvantageous, given its association with the Caribbean island of Anguilla. His response was rather unexpected.
Understanding gTLD and ccTLD Domain names come in two types. There are gTLD and ccTLD. gTLD A gTLD is an acronym for Generic Top Level Domain. These domains are not tied to any specific country and can be employed globally.
Common gTLDs include .com, .net, .org, .biz, .xyz, and more.
ccTLD A ccTLD is a top-level domain (TLD) that corresponds to a certain country.
.ccTLDs like .uk and .in represent the United Kingdom and India respectively.
Google utilizes ccTLDs to regionally align the websites that use them with the countries those TLDs are linked to.
If a domain uses a .in TLD, Google understands it as relevant for individuals in India. The .in TLD aids Google in identifying the relevance of that domain name to a specific country.
This aligns with the global expectation of how the Internet should function.
.AI is a ccTLD Some ccTLDs carry a significance beyond the country they represent.
For instance, the small island of Tuvalu possesses a ccTLD of .TV.
The .TV ccTLD is advantageous for websites that want to brand themselves as (or be relevant for) television-related content.
In the same vein, .AI is a ccTLD associated with the Caribbean island of Anguilla.
Is Using .AI Suitable for a Global Company? The questioner wanted to understand if using a ccTLD like .AI was appropriate.
The worry was whether employing the .AI ccTLD could inadvertently localize the website to the island of Anguilla, consequently making it more challenging for it to rank in other countries, such as the United States or elsewhere.
Here is the question that was posed:
“Is it advisable for a global company to use the .ai domain as their gTLD or does Google regard it as a ccTLD for the country of Anguilla?”
Google’s Gary Illyes provided a response that could be seen as surprising.
Gary’s response:
“As of early June, 2023, Google Search treats .ai as a gTLD, so indeed, you can utilize it for your global presence!” I refer to it as a surprising answer because .AI is a popular TLD employed by numerous companies.
It might have been commonly assumed that .AI domains were already being treated by Google as gTLDs rather than as a ccTLD, but this was not always the case.
Google did not switch to treating .AI as a gTLD until June 2023.
Gary’s answer underscores the importance of verifying whether a chosen domain extension is treated as a ccTLD or a gTLD, as this could impact a website’s ability to rank worldwide. Employing a top-level domain that Google treats as specific to a particular country could adversely affect the website’s ranking outside of the country the ccTLD is linked to.
Google’s List of ccTLDs Treated Like gTLDs Google maintains a list of ccTLDs that are treated as generic top-level domains.
The list reveals that ccTLDs such as .eu and .asia are treated like gTLDs. Other international domains treated like gTLDs include .ad, .co, .fm, .tv and, naturally, .ai.
These aren’t the only ccTLDs on the list. There are numerous ccTLDs listed that Google treats as if they were gTLDs.
