Domain Hack : Facts behind the Unconventional Domain Names

Domain hack refers to using subdomains and subfolders on a Top Level Domain Name to get a conventional full name that is not available as someone else has registered that domain name beforehand. Think about the domain name del.icio.us – it is typical example of this domain trick named as Domain hack. Domain hack has no relationship with Domain hijacking. Del.icio.us and delicio.us now however redirect to the new domain, delicious.com.

Why we need this trick of Domain Hack

We have already published an article on the domain names. From the list you will notice some Unreserved and Fully reserved, needs official documentation for ownership kind of Domain Names. As the most popular TLDs like .com and .net are open to all for registration, anyone can ‘purchase’ them. That means, you need not to be me, Abhishek Ghosh in order to buy the domain abhishekghosh.com. For popular keywords and famous peoples, almost all get parked, because the original owner can sell it at a very high price to the needed customer.

Domain Hack is funny !

Take the example of my own (still incomplete website) webpage – dr.abhishekghosh.net, it is minor domain hack but not full domain hack, it would if it was dr.abhishekgho.sh. That means, I have to buy the ccTLD abhishekgho.sh and create a subdomain named dr, so the final domain hack would be complete – dr.abhishekgho.sh, now if another Abhishek Ghosh wants a name, he can easily buy shekgho.sh and create a subdomain named abhi, so the final domain hack becomes – abhi.shekgho.sh ; .SH Domain belongs to The Island of Saint Helena. Not all ccTLDs are licensed for commercial use for such domain hack.

Examples of Domain Hack

pla.net
ma.tt (personal webpage of Matt Mullenweg)
blo.gs
inter.net
goo.gl
chronolo.gy
ninten.do
st.ar
stop.spamming.us
ema.il
thenet.do/ctor/

Like domain hack, there is Email Hacks too – dr@bhishekgho.sh can be such example. @ is used as the alphabet A in this example.

SEO of Domain Hack

As search engine can not understand the meaning like a human, unless there are lot of backlinks, a site with domain hack can face difficulty to compete with a TLD with the word. Minor domain hack with a TLD can be easier to establish as the domain name itself has the Keyword within it. Fact is that, for a personal website, only the salutation Dr. really works for the minor domain hack, as people searches along with the salutation. For more popular personalities, jr. , sr. can be good choices to do such minor domain hack.
As always, the final SERP of such full domain hack or minor domain hack is dependent on the quality and quantity of backlinks and onsite SEO. For any domain hack,a permanent redirection using .htaccess should be used to the site using domain hack from the main domain.