Tag: .ae domains

Millions of people all over the world browse the internet every day. They browse it by typing in something called a domain name into the address bar of the web browser. The browser and technology behind it then get you to the website you wanted. But how exactly do domain names work and what are they anyway?

What are domain names?

The simplest way to put it is: if your website is a house, a domain name is your address. A domain name is the address people type into the browser URL bar to get to your website. For example, for www.gulfbusiness.com, the domain name is gulfbusiness.com.

Although they might look identical, a domain name and a URL are two different things. The domain name is the actual name of the website, for instance, www.gulfbusiness.com, whereas a URL is the entire path of a website that leads you to a particular page like https://www.gulfbusiness.com/economy/.

Basically, the URL is the complete internet address used to locate a specific page and it includes the domain name.

The two most common types of domains are top-level domains (TLDs) and country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs). TLDs are well-known domain name extensions, like .com, .net, and .edu. Meanwhile, ccTLDs are country-specific domain name extensions, such as .uk or .fr.

Every domain name has a suffix that indicates which TLD it belongs to.

Choosing your domain name

When registering your domain name, it is important to choose a name that is unique, short, memorable, easy to remember and relates to your business with the matching keywords.

This, however, is challenging today since most of the “good” names are taken. Every supercar business wants to name their website supercars.com but by nature, domain names are unique and only one party can hold a name at a time.

This is where creativity and innovation come into place.

At the launch of the internet, only a few domain extensions existed such as .com and .net. And then came country level domains like .ae.

But the geographical connect can also be made extending the domain name by adding a keyword such as supercarsabudhabi.com.

In line with the trend of geographical names coming to this space, UAE capital Abu Dhabi has also recently introduced .abudhabi as a top-level domain name to drive the emirate’s global promotion, boost online business and bring more attention to the country.

Registering your domain name in the UAE

In the UAE, the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) is the regulatory body and registry operator for the .ae country code and .Emarat (Arabic) domain name.

You can register a domain ending with .ae or .Emarat (Arabic) from 22 accredited registrars as well as the two telecom operators, Etisalat and du.

Regarding the other top-level domains such as .com, you can choose from global and local registrar companies. Each top-level domain and country-code top-level domain is delegated to a registry, which is responsible for operating and setting all policies.

 

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Even though Arabic language is booming and is one of the fastest-growing languages globally, it is still facing access challenges online.

In 2013, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) rolled out domain names in Arabic, Chinese, German, Russian and Cyrillic scripts.

When Russian and Chinese Top-Level Domain names have grown in leaps and bounds, Arabic domain names and country code top-level domain (ccTLD) of UAE (.emarat), Arabic equivalent of .AE domain extension, .Al Saudia for Saudia Arabia and .Misr for Egypt did not grow correspondingly and did not close the gap between the Arabic content and the Arabic user.

Top-Level Domains are letters after the final dot of a domain name like .com, .ae and .net while “.Shabaka” (in Arabic means .web) was the world’s first Arabic new Top-Level Domain (TLD).

Top industry experts said that the key reason is due to the lack of Arabic content online despite the growth in Arabic speaking population.

“The other reason is universal acceptance. Most of the e-commerce and online banking platforms accept emails in ASCII or Latin characters and does not recognise Arabic or Chinese email ID address. People go and register for domain names in Arabic but there is a limitation in how they could use the domain names because domain application of a domain name is email and if you want to use your email ID in your local language and if you are not able to do that, then it is a problem,” Baher Esmat, ICANN’s vice-president for stakeholder engagement in the Middle East, told TechRadar Middle East.

Despite great efforts from the ICANN and the domain managers in the countries to spread awareness on these domains, Munir Badr, Founder and CEO of AEServer, one of the accredited domain name registrars under the TRA for .ae, said that the general public and businesses, in general, prefer to use the common domain extensions in the English language as they are by far more popular, easy to type and use by everyone and in some cases cost less to register compared to the IDNs.

Esmat said that some Gulf Cooperation Council countries, apart from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco, Iraq, Sudan, Somalia have a large Arabic-only speaking population and they use mostly Arabic language on their mobile phones and social media.

From an ICANN’s point of view, he said that the organisation’s role is to ensure that domain names work securely and stably.

icann

 

Internet penetration rate in Middle East

“When communities around the world ask ICANN to make domain names in different languages, ICANN has to respond to their needs. Whether the domain names are working or not is ICANN’s business or our responsibility,” Esmatsaid.

According to ICANN, the largest country-level domain names, in terms of registrations, are China and Russia.

“When we have millions of domain names in China and Russia, we have less than 1,000 TLDs in Arabic in Saudi Arabia and other GCC countries. This may change as our region is the fastest-growing region on internet usage globally,” he said.

According to Internet World Stats, the Middle East had a population of 258.37m as of April last year and out of this, 175.50m are internet users, which translates to 4% of the total internet users globally.

The internet penetration rate in the Middle East stands at 67.2%, higher than the rest of the world at 56.5% and higher than the global average of 56.8%.

According to Ethnologue, Arabic is the fifth most spoken language in the world in 2019 with 319m after Chinese, Spanish, English and Hindi.

Badr said the low usage is mainly due to lack of interest from the registrants.

“If we look at Dubai in general, the language of business is English and with a high ex-pat population, many of the business decision-makers are well aware of the domains and had prior experience by using a generic domain name such as .com or .net or country-level domains (ccTLD) so they will opt for a .ae name and a .com name as a bundle and both in Roman script,” he said.

On the other hand, he said that .ae is one of the best performing domains in the Mena region with over 230,000 domain names registered and is extremely popular within the UAE and it is also cost-effective and easy to register.

However, he said that there is lack of awareness and no big or well-known brands or government agencies are using such domains.

 

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We have been able to uncover even more great .ae domain sales history and whats more incredible is the amount of $$$ that these were sold for!

hotmail.ae >> Sold for ~50,000 AED (US$ 13,660) >>This is awesome!!

vtc.ae (the super fast 4×4 Nissan VTC) >> Sold for 3,000 AED (US$ 820)

22.ae & 33.ae >> 10,000 AED for both (US$ 2732)

All these were sold between March to May 2009!

Those figures are getting crazy for .ae domain names! Still unconvinced?

[Thanks to Mohammad Alhamed for the sources]

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Good news for all domainers out there who have been looking for a safe and secure way of selling and transfering .ae domain names to another party. AEserver.com (aka Engage.ae), a .ae accredited registrar under aeDA has launched this new and exclusive service for both its clients and those who are simply looking for an effective way to sell/buy .ae domain names. The services they provide include: Full advise, brokerage/ payment terms/ registrant/registrar transfer and full escrow. More at http://aedomains.aeserver.com/ae_domains_broker.html

Happy Domaining!

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