Funny things Malaysians can do with a .MY website URL

If you’ve decided to set up a business or start your career as a freelancer, the first thing on your mind is likely:

When it comes to choosing an address, you could just do the obvious and name it after your business. But this might run into issues when the name’s taken or when the URL becomes an unintentional joke – like when an IT asset scrapping company registered their website as www.itscrap.com. Ideally, you’d also want something that’s memorable and easy to type so, for example, if your name’s Helmy, one possible option would be www.helmy.com.

But wouldn’t it be cooler if it was hel.my?

As it turns out, Malaysia has an awesome country suffix, or more properly known as a country code top level domain (ccTLD), in the form of .MY, which basically means that the website belongs to a person or business that’s based in Malaysia. These domains are solely administered by our friends at MYNIC Berhad, whom we’ve partnered up with to not just give you some creative options for a .MY URL, but also to point out some advantages that having one brings to your website.

You can still get eatsiu.my for your dimsum business – and more!

While MYNIC administers nine domain name categories, some of them are reserved for specific use such as military (.mil.my) or education (.edu.my). For the most part, anyone can use a .MY but you can click this link to find out what each category means if you’re curious.

We checked the availability of these sites on MYNIC’s website, so can confirm 100% that these are still available at the time of writing:

so-crea.my

If you’re going into the ice cream or yoghurt business.

clari.net.my

If you’re opening a music shop… especially one with wind instruments. Alternatively, it can also work if you’re setting up an IT infrastructure business.

fish.net.my

If you are selling socks…. or actual fishing equipment 🐠

eatsiu.my

If you have a dimsum delivery service, you get both a URL and a tagline.

so-yum.my

At first we were thinking of a restaurant, but it might be better suited for a foodie blog or a review site for makan places.

babyinmytum.my

Some people use cakes or dinners to surprise their family with a new cahaya mata, so… why not a website?

big-tum.my

This one is a bit more versatile… it can be used for a foodie blog, but also fitness, or y’know… cahaya matas.

superstea.my

Don’t fikir bukan-bukan ah. This could be for a site selling tea, or a sauna/spa.

Other than having a great conversation starter, there’s also one major practical benefit to getting a .MY domain – better discoverability online.

.MY domains get better Google search results in Malaysia

When you’re searching for something online, there’s a 99.69% chance that you’ll be headed to Google. So if you’re looking to promote your business, having a website would be a lot more effective compared to a social media profile or a store in e-commerce platforms like Lazada or Shopee.

MYNIC CEO Datuk Ts. Hasnul also brought up a very compelling point when we spoke to him, saying that Google prioritizes local websites in a particular region; basically meaning that you stand a higher chance of showing up in the first page of the search results when you have a .MY suffix in Malaysia.

“Malaysians search on Google 20 million times a day. There are 8 million registered businesses in Malaysia, but only 800k – 900k have a website [whether .MY or .COM]. Those that don’t are losing out because it’s very hard to be visible only on social media.” – Datuk Ts. Hasnul to CILISOS

Aside from showing some national pride, a .MY domain also indicates the legitimacy of the business or the people behind the website; since you’re required to provide some documents when you register – more info here.

But what if your domain name has been taken?

One thing we quickly learnt is that many straightforward words like mom.my, myoh.my, or even jere.my are already taken. But if you head to many of them, you might either get an unreachable page, or one with a blank page and some ads on them…

These are either forms of domain parking, or worse, cybersquatting; and for the most part it means you’ll need to come up with a different name. However, if you feel you have reasons to own that name, MYNIC can help you file a dispute to the Asian International Arbitration Centre. They won’t be involved in the dispute itself, but they will enforce any decisions made by the centre.

However, just like how you’d patent an invention or immediately register the name of your company with SSM, the best way to ensure that you get the domain name you want is to just buy it before someone else beats you to the punch. On that note though, there are some domain names which are restricted because they’re considered offensive, so you’d want to avoid any ethnic, religious, or sexual slurs.

And yes, sodo.my is completely unavailable. We checked.

Datuk Ts. Hasnul says that country-based domains follow local laws, and MYNIC will engage local linguists from time to time to determine what’s offensive, as well as taking public complaints into account. Their biggest problem? Ass.

“Many words have a combination of “A-S-S”. Our system will detect and flag these words, but it will be up to a human being to assess and evaluate if it’s offensive or not.” – Datuk Ts. Hasnul

You can put your name on the internet from RM32 a year

Unless you’re aiming for really premium domain names, you don’t have to pay more for a creative one. Whether you go through MYNICs partner vendors or companies like GoDaddy, the price differences are dependent on what additional services or promotional discounts you get. Here’s a full list of prices for just the domain name.

If you have no idea how all this website stuff works, or a small business thinking that you don’t have the budget to put a fancy website together, Datuk Ts. Hasnul points out that many of the small entrepreneurs who’ve found success through MYNIC’s PRIME program didn’t either. They just put a great product on their website, a Whatsapp or phone number, and the customers reached out.

“It’s not about the complexity of the website. You may not even need a payment gateway. [Many small businesses] just put a phone or Whatsapp number. Don’t be bullish thinking technology will help – the fundamentals of business still apply. Grow within your means.” – Datuk Ts. Hasnul

And sometimes, that’s all you need.