Ukrainian domain registrars will once again start a campaign to de-russify the domain of the capital starting from May 1st. The promotion of the domain KYIV.UA is one of the steps in the movement towards the all-Ukrainian de-russification of domains. The initiative was launched by the domain name registrar and hosting provider Cityhost.ua in June 2022.
The main idea of the movement is to motivate users to switch from Russian-language regional domains (KIEV.UA, ROVNO.UA, KHARKOV.UA) to correct Ukrainian-language versions of domains (KYIV.UA, RIVNE.UA, KHARKIV.UA). Within this initiative, starting from May 1st, 2024, for three months, domain registrars will offer discounts and inform users about the importance of choosing domains with Ukrainian-language names for Kyiv. The campaign is carried out at the initiative of the administrator of the national domain UA, Hostmaster LLC.
It is noted that the capital domain is the most popular among all regional domain zones. That is why it receives the most attention. However, the participants of the campaign remind that the issue of Russified domains is broader.
Currently, our domain system operates with 17 incorrect local domains that were created in the early 1990s. They contain Russified, Sovietized, and sometimes just improperly transliterated names of regional centers.
The participating registrars are calling on users to choose the Ukrainian-language domain KYIV.UA when creating a new website. For cases where an old Russian-language domain is already in use, a special instruction has been prepared to gradually move the site to the new domain without losing traffic.
It is important to know that KYIV.UA and KIEV.UA are mirror domains. For example, if a user has a domain name like shop.kiev.ua, then the name shop.kyiv.ua is permanently reserved for it. Only one person can register two mirror domains, and this can only be done with one registrar.
Similar campaign started last year in August, lasted for two months, and showed very good results - there were 1780 new registrations in the KYIV.UA domain zone, a growth of 60%.
Before the campaign, the Russian-language domain KIEV.UA had 39,725 domains, while KYIV.UA had only 2,781 domains, which means it was more than 10 times smaller (statistics for July 2023).
After the campaign, the numbers changed: KIEV.UA had fewer, 38,784 domains, while KYIV.UA had 4,771 domains (October 2023).
Six months after the campaign, its effect is still ongoing - the Russian-language domain is decreasing, while the Ukrainian-language one is increasing. For instance, in March 2024, there were 27,618 domains in the KIEV.UA domain zone, whereas KYIV.UA crossed the 5,000 domain mark.
Despite the positive trend, the Ukrainian version still significantly lags behind the Russified domain and requires support from users and their conscious choice.
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