Popularity of Chinese character country code TLDs

Yesterday we looked at the popularity of the Chinese character TLD for Singapore Internet domains. Today we’re going to examine the Chinese character ccTLDs (country code top-level domains) for those places that use Chinese characters and compare the figures with those for the respective Roman alphabet TLDs.

In other words, how, for example, does the use of taiwan in traditional Chinese characters   .台灣 domains compare with the use of .tw domains?

Since, unlike the case with Singapore, I don’t have the registration figures, I’m having to make do with Google hits, which is a different measure. For this purpose, Google is unfortunately a bit of a blunt instrument. But at least it should be a fairly evenhanded blunt instrument and will be useful in establishing baselines for later comparisons.

A few notes before we get started:

  • Japan has yet to bother with completing the process for its own name in kanji (Japan, as written in kanji / Chinese characters), so it is omitted here.
  • Macau only recently asked for aomen in simplified Chinese characters    
  .澳门 and aomen in traditional Chinese characters    
  .澳門, so those figures are still at zero.
  • Oddly enough, there’s no taiwan_super in traditional Chinese characters   
  .臺灣 ccTLD, even though the Ma administration, which was in power when Taiwan’s ccTLDs went into effect, officially prefers the more complex form of taiwan_super in traditional Chinese characters   
  .臺灣 to taiwan in traditional Chinese characters   .台灣 — not to mention prefering it to taiwan in simplified Chinese characters    
  .台湾.
  Google Hits Percent of Total
MACAU    
.mo 18400000 100.00
aomen in simplified Chinese characters    
  .澳门 0 0.00
aomen in traditional Chinese characters    
  .澳門 0 0.00
TAIWAN    
.tw 206000000 99.86
taiwan in simplified Chinese characters    
  .台湾 67600 0.03
taiwan_super in traditional Chinese characters   
  .臺灣 0 0.00
taiwan in traditional Chinese characters   .台灣 230000 0.11
HONG KONG    
.hk 193000000 99.94
xianggang  in Chinese characters 
  .香港 118000 0.06
SINGAPORE    
.sg 97800000 100.00
xinjiapo  in Chinese characters 
  .新加坡 2 0.00
CHINA    
.cn 315000000 99.61
zhongguo in simplified Chinese characters  
  .中国 973000 0.31
zhongguo in traditional Chinese characters   
  .中國 251000 0.08

So in no instance does the Chinese character ccTLD reach even one half of one percent of the total for any given place.

Here are the results in a chart.

Graph showing that although China leads in domains in Chinese characters, they do not reach even one half of one percent of the total for China

Note that the ratio of simplified:traditional forms in China and Taiwan are roughly mirror images of each other, as is perhaps to be expected.

See also Platform on Tai, Pinyin News, December 30, 2011