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    • .it

    Country-code top-level domainsDNSSEC

    Overview

    .it is the country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) assigned to Italy. Introduced in 1987, it is intended for entities connected with Italy and is widely used within the country. Registration is permitted at the second level and the TLD supports Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs).

    History

    • Assigned by IANA on 23 December 1987 and became active on 1 January 1988; the first registered name was for the Italian National Research Council (CNR).
    • Management has been handled within CNR institutes: initially CNUCE, later the Institute for Telematic Applications (IAT), and subsequently the Institute of Informatics and Telematics (IIT) of CNR.
    • In 1999 the registry liberalised rules by removing registration limits for organisations; in 2004 limits were removed for individuals.
    • In 2005 the Registry consolidated regulatory and implementation roles with an internal Steering Committee.
    • The registry operation was rebranded as Registro .it in 2009.
    • IDN support was introduced on 11 July 2012; in subsequent years the acceptable character set was expanded to include characters for all official EU languages.

    Usage and Audience

    • Primary users: Italian organisations, public administrations, municipalities, regions and private individuals meeting eligibility rules.
    • Popular within Italy and commonly used for domain hacks in English-speaking contexts (examples cited include large services such as Google.it and other domain-hack usages).
    • Adoption has varied regionally within Italy, with lower registration rates reported in some southern regions.

    Registration Rules

    • Eligibility: registration is permitted only to adults (individuals of legal age) who are citizens, residents or have a registered office/headquarters in one of the following: countries of the European Economic Area (EEA), the Vatican City State, the Republic of San Marino, the Swiss Confederation, or the United Kingdom.
    • Structure: second-level registrations are allowed; some third-level domains exist (e.g., comune.palermo.it, regione.lazio.it) and there are special second-level labels for government and institutions.
    • Reserved/special second-level domains include (but are not limited to):
      • gov.it — Central State Public Administrations
      • edu.it — educational institutions
      • difesa.it — Italian Armed Forces
      • esteri.it — Ministry of Foreign Affairs and diplomatic/consular representatives
      • geographic names (province/municipality/region names) are reserved; third-level registrations are used under them
      • certain domains reserved for government use (examples: italia.it, italy.it, italie.it)
    • Length and characters:
      • Minimum length: 3 characters
      • Maximum length: 63 characters
      • Allowed characters: ASCII letters (a–z), digits (0–9), hyphen (-) and non-ASCII characters included in the registry's technical guideline for IDNs
      • Constraints: a domain cannot begin or end with a hyphen; the first four characters cannot be the sequence "xn--" (reserved for IDN encoding)
    • IDNs: supported since 11 July 2012; character set expanded over time to cover the official languages of the EU.

    SEO and Brand Impact

    • The .it extension signals an Italian presence or connection, making it a natural choice for Italy-focused businesses, institutions and audiences.
    • Its popularity in Italy supports local recognition and trust among Italian users.
    • The two-letter string "it" has also made the TLD attractive for memorable domain hacks and branding in broader markets, enhancing recall for some services.

    Notable Cases or Examples

    • The first registered .it name was for the CNR (the Italian National Research Council).
    • Widely used national examples include google.it; other major services have used .it either for local presence or domain-hack opportunities.
    • Examples of structured third-level usage include comune.palermo.it (municipal domain) and regione.lazio.it (regional government domain).

    Operator

    IIT - CNR

    Whois

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

domain:       IT

organisation: IIT - CNR
address:      Via Moruzzi, 1
address:      Pisa I-56124
address:      Italy

contact:      administrative
name:         Andrea Passarella
organisation: IIT - CNR
address:      Via Moruzzi, 1
address:      Pisa I-56124
address:      Italy
phone:        +39 050 315 2112
e-mail:       direttore@iit.cnr.it

contact:      technical
name:         Maurizio Martinelli
organisation: IIT - CNR
address:      Via Moruzzi, 1
address:      Pisa I-56124
address:      Italy
phone:        +39 050 315 2087
e-mail:       maurizio.martinelli@iit.cnr.it

nserver:      A.DNS.IT 194.0.16.215 2001:678:12:0:194:0:16:215
nserver:      DNS.NIC.IT 192.12.192.5 2a00:d40:1:1:0:0:0:5
nserver:      M.DNS.IT 2001:1ac0:0:200:0:a5d1:6004:2 217.29.76.4
nserver:      NAMESERVER.CNR.IT 194.119.192.34 2a00:1620:c0:220:194:119:192:34
nserver:      R.DNS.IT 193.206.141.46 2001:760:ffff:ffff:0:0:0:ca
nserver:      V.DNS.IT 194.0.25.44 2001:678:20:0:0:0:0:44
ds-rdata:     41901 10 2 47f7f7ba21e48591f6172eed13e35b66b93ad9f2880fc9bada64f68ce28ebb90

whois:        whois.nic.it

status:       ACTIVE
remarks:      Registration information: https://www.nic.it/

created:      1987-12-23
changed:      2025-01-28
source:       IANA

    Registrars