.ws

.ws
Introduced	14 July 1995
TLD type	Country code top-level domain
Status	Active
Registry	SamoaNIC (Computer Services Ltd. Samoa)
Sponsor	Government of Samoa
Intended use	Entities connected with Samoa
Actual use	Not used much inside Samoa, popular for domain hacks, URL shortening and emoji domains
Registration restrictions	None
Structure	Registrations are directly at second level
Documents	Policies
Dispute policies	UDRP
Registry website	SamoaNIC; Computer Services Ltd.

.ws is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Samoa. It is administered by SamoaNIC, for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Government of Samoa.

The .ws domain is an abbreviation for "Western Samoa", which was the nation's official name in the 1970s when two-letter country codes were standardized. Although there are no geographic restrictions on registration of most second-level .ws domains, .org.ws, .gov.ws, and .edu.ws registration is restricted.

Prior to March 14, 2008, .ws domains were not allowed to be transferred from one domain registrar to another.

The .ws country code has been marketed as a domain hack, with the ws purportedly standing for "world site", website or web service, providing a "global" Internet presence to registrants, as it supports all internationalized domain names. A popular use for the domain is for news organizations for URL shortening purposes, mainly suffixed as "(organization name)ne.ws".

Due to its potential popularity, a sliding scale of prices is operated by the registrar, depending on the brevity of the desired domain. Domains with four characters or more are competitively priced while three-, two-, and single-character domains have their own pricing tiers, quickly scaling into thousands of United States dollars. A company named "Global Domains International" operates a multi-level marketing scheme for .ws domain reselling.

In 2016, .ws gained popularity as one of the first domain name registries to offer emoji domains.^[1]^[2]

As of 2018^[update], there are approximately 25,000 emoji domains registered on .ws.^[3]

Google treats the .ws ccTLD as a generic top level domain gTLD.^[4]

References

^ Mihalcik, Carrie (28 October 2016). "Emoji could soon take over domain names". CNET. Retrieved 1 September 2017.
^ Coren, Michael (11 November 2016). "The land rush for emoji domains is coming". Quartz. Retrieved 1 September 2017.
^ Johnson, Paddy (2 February 2018). "Emoji Domains Are the Future (Maybe)". Gizmodo. Retrieved 4 March 2018.
^ International targeting, Google Search Central, Google Inc., retrieved 4 July 2021