Single letter domains in China
Here’s who owns single letter .Cn domain names.
Corporate China loves short domains. Over the years I have seen many Chinese firms upgrade to short domains such as JD.com, Le.com, VIP.com, and DJI.com. How regarding single letter domains?
Even though Chinese firms prefer .com, none own a single letter .com since most of these domains are still reserved. Still, we can turn to .cn, the most popular extension by volume in China.
I checked all single letter .cn domains from A to Z, and the result is shown below.
| Domain | Status |
|---|---|
| A.cn | Not resolve |
| B.cn | Personal site |
| C.cn | Personal site |
| D.cn | Games. D stands for 1st word in site name Dang Le Wang |
| E.cn | Not resolve |
| F.cn | Not resolve |
| G.cn | Owned by Google. Redirect to Google.cn |
| H.cn | Not resolve |
| I.cn | Not resolve |
| J.cn | Social network for women. J may stand for 1st word in Weibo (similar to Twitter) handle Jian Dan Wang |
| K.cn | eCommerce. K may stand for 2nd word in firm name Wei Ku |
| L.cn | Not resolve |
| M.cn | URL shortener |
| N.cn | Not resolve |
| O.cn | Not resolve |
| P.cn | Links to popular sites. Meaning of P unknown |
| Q.cn | Not resolve |
| R.cn | Landing page seeking partnership |
| S.cn | eCommerce of shoes. S may stand for “shoes” |
| T.cn | URL shortener |
| U.cn | Page title indicates domain is for sale |
| V.cn | Not resolve |
| W.cn | Not resolve |
| X.cn | Not resolve |
| Y.cn | Not resolve |
| Z.cn | Owned by Amazon. Redirect to Amazon.cn |
As you can see, there are still many single letter domains not developed into websites. Interestingly, two letters (G, Z) are owned by U.S. firms Google and Amazon respectively.
A powerful feature of single-letter domains is that they can be used as URL shorteners. In a LinkedIn post, top domain investor Yue Dai describes how SMS messages include such domains to take clients to corporate sites. For example, both “y.m.cn/00jD” and “t.cn/RV3OWuy” take you to KFC’s Chinese site.
