.ws

Internet country-code top-level domain for Samoa .ws DotWS domain logo.png 14 July 1995 Country code top-level domain Active SamoaNIC (Computer Services Ltd. Samoa) Government of Samoa Entities connected with Samoa Not used much inside Samoa, popular for domain hacks, URL shortening and emoji domains None Registrations are directly at second level Policies UDRP SamoaNIC .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. 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".Hill Michael P. 29 September 2010 TV news jumps on URL shortener bandwagon https://www.newscaststudio.com/2010/09/29/tv-news-jumps-on-url-shortener-bandwagon/?og=1 26 August 2025 NewscastStudio en-US Google Search treats the .ws ccTLD as a generic top-level domain (gTLD).International targeting https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/crawling/managing-multi-regional-sites Google Search Central Google Inc. 4 July 2021 The registrar operates a sliding scale of prices depending on each domain's brevity. 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. Prior to March 14, 2008, .ws domains were not allowed to be transferred from one domain registrar to another. In 2016, .ws gained popularity as one of the first domain name registries to offer emoji domains.Mihalcik Carrie Emoji could soon take over domain names https://www.cnet.com/news/emoji-godaddy-domain-names/ 1 September 2017 CNET 28 October 2016Coren Michael The land rush for emoji domains is coming https://qz.com/828436/the-land-rush-for-emoji-domains-is-coming/ 1 September 2017 Quartz 11 November 2016 2018, there are approximately 25,000 emoji domains registered on .ws.Johnson Paddy Emoji Domains Are the Future (Maybe) https://gizmodo.com/emoji-domains-are-the-future-maybe-1823319626 4 March 2018 Gizmodo 2 February 2018 See also Internet in Samoa References External links IANA .ws whois information SamoaNIC.ws (for registrants in Samoa and some nearby countries) Internet in Category:Country code top-level domains Category:Communications in Samoa Category:Internet properties established in 1995