.cc

Overview

.cc is the country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) assigned to the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, an Australian territory. Although intended for entities connected with the islands, .cc is marketed and used internationally as an open, generic alternative to .com.

History

• Introduced and delegated on 13 October 1997.
• The TLD was originally assigned by IANA and is administered by eNIC Cocos (Keeling) Islands Pty. Ltd., doing business as Island Internet Services.
• eNIC is a subsidiary associated with VeriSign; Verisign provides technical registry operations.
• ICANN and eNIC formalized their relationship under ICANN's accountability framework.

Usage and Audience

• .cc is used globally rather than being limited to the Cocos (Keeling) Islands; Google treats .cc as a generic top-level domain because users and site owners often view it as non-country-targeted.

• Common user groups and uses include:

  • Sports clubs (notably cricket and cycling clubs)
  • Churches and Christian organizations ("CC" as abbreviation for Christian Church or Catholic Church)
  • Open-source and open-hardware projects ("CC" association with Creative Commons; example: Arduino uses a .cc site)
  • Local branding (examples cited include Cape Cod businesses and marketing campaigns such as Canadian Club)
  • Community colleges and other educational uses, though .edu remains more common for U.S. higher education
  • The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus also uses .cc alongside other regional domains

• Registration volume: reports vary. One source cites over one million registrations (placing .cc among the top 50 ccTLDs), while other counts (DomainTools) show roughly 750,000 active domains.

Registration Rules

• Open ccTLD: anyone may register a .cc domain.
• Registrations are permitted directly at the second level (example: example.cc).
• The registry record lists no general restrictions; the public-facing infobox notes "Restrictions: None."
• Dispute policy: UDRP applies for domain disputes.
• A number of organized second-level zones are maintained by CoCCA, including com.cc, net.cc, edu.cc, and org.cc. Separately, subdomain providers (for example co.cc, cc.cc, cu.cc, cz.cc) have existed as commercial or free subdomain services; these are not official hierarchical zones of the .cc registry.

SEO and Brand Impact

• Google treats .cc as a generic TLD, so it is not geo-targeted in search by default.
• Verisign markets .cc as an alternative to generic TLDs such as .com, positioning it for broad commercial use.
• Trust and abuse considerations:
  • The TLD has been a frequent subject of WIPO disputes, ranking in the top ten ccTLDs for contested domain name proceedings (typically trademark-related disputes).
  • Security reports have flagged .cc among a small set of TLDs associated with high rates of malicious registrations. An industry summary attributed a large share of malicious domains to .cc alongside .com, .pw, and .tk.

Notable Cases or Examples

• co.cc subdomain issues:

  • The co.cc subdomain, provided by a private operator rather than the official registry, was widely abused by spammers and operators of splogs and rogue antivirus schemes.
  • In July 2011 Google removed over 11 million .co.cc websites from its search results due to widespread abuse. co.cc later stopped accepting new registrations and its name servers were offline from roughly 2012 to 2014. The co.cc domain was offered for sale in 2018 and was registered to another entity by 2019.

• Registry and dispute activity:

  • .cc is a frequent source of WIPO proceedings, with many disputes arising from alleged trademark infringement.

• Usage examples cited in sources: Arduino (open-hardware project) and various community, religious, and local branding uses.

% IANA WHOIS server
% for more information on IANA, visit http://www.iana.org
% This query returned 1 object

domain:       CC

organisation: eNIC Cocos (Keeling) Islands Pty. Ltd. d/b/a Island Internet Services
address:      Level 10, 5 Queens Road
address:      Melbourne VIC 3004
address:      Australia

contact:      administrative
name:         Mario West, Managing Director
organisation: eNIC Cocos (Keeling) Islands Pty.
organisation: Ltd. d/b/a Island Internet Services
address:      c/o Verisign Internet Services
address:      Level 10, 5 Queens Road
address:      Melbourne VIC 3004
address:      Australia
phone:        +613 9926 6700
fax-no:       +613 9926 6788
e-mail:       cc-administration@verisign.com

contact:      technical
name:         Registry Customer Service
organisation: VeriSign Global Registry Services
address:      12061 Bluemont Way
address:      Reston VA 20190
address:      United States of America (the)
phone:        +1 703 925-6999
fax-no:       +1 703 948 3978
e-mail:       info@verisign-grs.com

nserver:      AC1.NSTLD.COM 192.42.173.30 2001:500:120:0:0:0:0:30
nserver:      AC2.NSTLD.COM 192.42.174.30 2001:500:121:0:0:0:0:30
nserver:      AC3.NSTLD.COM 192.42.175.30 2001:500:122:0:0:0:0:30
nserver:      AC4.NSTLD.COM 192.42.176.30 2001:500:123:0:0:0:0:30
ds-rdata:     519 8 2 e1ec6495abd34562e6f433dee201e6c6a52cb10af69c04d675da692d2d566897

whois:        ccwhois.verisign-grs.com

status:       ACTIVE
remarks:      Registration information: http://www.nic.cc/

created:      1997-10-13
changed:      2025-08-21
source:       IANA