Overview
- .كوم is an internationalized domain name (IDN) that is a transliteration of the ASCII gTLD .com into Arabic script.
- It was applied for and is managed by Verisign as part of its set of .com transliterations intended to improve accessibility for non-Latin scripts.
- Category: Commerce (IDN transliteration of .com).
History
- Applied for by Verisign under ICANN's New gTLD Program as one of the company’s IDN transliterations of .com.
- Verisign announced plans to apply for multiple transliterations (roughly a dozen) of .com and .net in various scripts (including Arabic).
- The application for .كوم succeeded and the string was delegated to the DNS root zone on 28 July 2015.
- Registry and manager: Verisign.
Usage and Audience
- Primary target audience identified in the application: registrants of existing Arabic-language second-level IDN domain names in .com.
- Application data cited more than 800,000 internationalized second-level domain names in .com overall, including over 40,000 in Arabic; these registrants were an initial target to adopt IDN.IDN names under the new gTLD.
- Intended to serve Arabic-speaking websites, businesses and users who prefer Arabic-script domain names for improved readability and accessibility.
Registration Rules
- Registry operator: Verisign.
- Verisign outlined plans to allow existing registrants of second-level IDN domain names under .com to secure the matching name under the corresponding IDN gTLD (i.e., enable registration of IDN.IDN where both the second-level and the TLD are in the same non-Latin script).
- No further specific eligibility, character set or registration-period details are provided in the source material.
SEO and Brand Impact
- The application argued that an Arabic-script .com improves functionality and accessibility for non-Latin speakers by allowing both the SLD and the TLD to appear in the same script.
- The proposal drew criticism during the comment period on linguistic grounds: some commenters argued that the chosen Arabic string does not correspond to an existing Arabic word and that creation of such a transliteration should involve language authorities (e.g., the Arabic Language Academy), raising questions about cultural and linguistic appropriateness and potential trust perceptions among Arabic speakers.
Notable Cases or Examples
- .كوم is one of Verisign's set of transliterations of .com (Verisign applied for multiple transliterations across scripts including Thai, Devanagari, Korean, Chinese (Hant/Hans), Hebrew, Cyrillic/Russian, Arabic and Japanese).
- Delegation date to the root zone: 28 July 2015.
- Application figures cited: more than 800,000 IDN second-level registrations in .com overall, including over 40,000 Arabic IDN SLDs.
Operator
VeriSign Sarl
Whois
% IANA WHOIS server
% for more information on IANA, visit http://www.iana.org
% This query returned 1 object
domain: كوم
domain-ace: XN--FHBEI
organisation: VeriSign Sarl
address: 3 rue des Pilettes
address: Fribourg CH-1700
address: Switzerland
contact: administrative
name: Registry Customer Service
organisation: Verisign, Inc.
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
contact: technical
name: Registry Customer Service
organisation: Verisign, Inc.
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: 9171 8 2 8fa92257d3ab8e1be968bce6500cd79efc42d91f43226c7147f978e00c80944d
whois: whois.nic.xn--fhbei
status: ACTIVE
remarks: Registration information: http://www.verisigninc.com
created: 2015-07-02
changed: 2020-10-01
source: IANA
