.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 the .com extension, it is administered by SWITCH Information Technology Services.
The domain ch derives from Confoederatio Helvetica (Helvetic Confederation), the Latin name for the country, which was used because of its neutrality with regard to the four official languages of Switzerland. CH is the ISO 3166-2 code for Switzerland and also is used on vehicle plates.
Second-level domain names must be at least three letters long. Two-letter subdomain names are restricted to the Swiss cantons, as well as the domain ch.ch of the Federal Chancellery of Switzerland. The only exception has been the former domain of the Expo.02 which was held in Switzerland, www.expo.02.ch.
Registrations of internationalized domain names have been accepted since March 2004.
In the Chinese domain market
.ch has been of a rising interest to Chinese domain investors for several reasons. According to EuropeID.com, the .ch extension still has plenty of valuable English keywords and short letter and number combinations left. A contributing factor may be because the majority of .ch registrations are in German, leaving many English words available. In addition, with 2 million domains under .ch being registered, most of the reserved domains have the European market in mind, allowing valuable domains for other languages such as Chinese keywords in the Latin script being registered at a normal price.
Domain Hacks
The .ch domain is very popular for domain hacks, because of the number of words ending in "ch", especially English words. Some examples are Techcrunch's tcrn.ch, lun.ch, ar.ch, and tea.ch. However, there are also other domain hacks in other languages, such as scha.ch in German for the word "chess".
.swiss
The Federal Office of Communications (OFCOM) has begun registering .swiss domains as of 7 September 2015. This is meant to augment the traditional .ch TLD. Applicants must currently have a "registered place of business and a physical administrative base in Switzerland" to apply.
References
External links
- IANA .ch whois information
- .ch NIC registry
