Country-code domain: a market, a legal entity, or both
A country-code domain is a national address such as one ending in a two-letter country suffix. An alternate pointing at one may belong to the same company, a subsidiary or a licensee, and the markup does not say which. As of 2026-09-22.
| Possibility | Readable from the markup | Consequence for a count |
|---|---|---|
| The same company, same product | No | Counting it would be fair |
| A subsidiary with its own pricing | No | Counting it would mislead |
| A licensee selling something similar | No | Counting it would be wrong |
| A legacy domain redirecting back | No | Counting it would double up |
Inclusion rule. The readings an alternate on a national domain admits. None of them can be distinguished from markup, which is why all are treated alike. Order. Most favourable reading first.
1Four readings, none of them checkable
The same declaration is consistent with one company, two companies and a redirect. Opening the page rarely settles it either, since a licensee will usually look like a regional office.
A rule that counted these would therefore be counting something it could not identify. Excluding them loses real coverage in the cases where the domain is the same company, and it loses it consistently for everybody.
2The Chinese case, twice in this register
Two vendors here declare a Chinese alternate that resolves to a separate domain. Companies selling into mainland China commonly run one, for reasons that include hosting and regulation as well as marketing.
So the rule that keeps this column comparable is also the rule that hides that market. Both discards are recorded on the vendor pages rather than dropped, which is the only honest way to apply a rule that costs a vendor something.
3What a reader should do with the raw declaration
Read it. A declaration pointing at a national domain is evidence the company is present in that market in some form, and that is worth knowing even though it cannot be counted in a comparable column.
What it is not evidence of is that the product on the other domain has the same features, the same prices or the same language support. Those are separate questions and none of them is answered by an attribute.
A definition, not a measurement: no vendor figure appears here that is not also in the register. The two discarded Chinese declarations are printed on their vendors own entries.
Nearby terms: Language subdomain, Named list. The whole vocabulary is at terms; nothing on this page is a claim about a named product.