The ccTLD domain extension for South Africa is .ZA, and it looks like many businesses uses the .CO.ZA extension for their websites. It looks like the South African government is now requiring all websites that use the .ZA ccTLD extension to provide a link to the country’s Covid-19 coronavirus website on their homepage. The South African government’s COVID-19 website can be found by visiting SACoronavirus.co.za.
You can see this requirement was publicized on the official Twitter page of The Presidency of the Republic of South Africa:
As part of the national effort to contain the spread of the coronavirus, all websites with a .za domain name must now feature a clearly visible link to government’s Covid-19 portal on their home page: https://t.co/tuf10yzemC #SouthAfricaLockdown #COVID19SouthAfrica pic.twitter.com/uVnyoEP5Df
— Presidency | South Africa 🇿🇦 (@PresidencyZA) March 28, 2020
The verified and official Twitter account of the South African government also tweeted about this new requirement today:
[Document] Notice to all .ZA domain name Registrants/Domain Name Holders https://t.co/Xm83r0XaiR pic.twitter.com/IiBWku97L7
— South African Government (@GovernmentZA) March 28, 2020
I did a Google search (site:.za) to see if I could find some popular .ZA websites to see how this looks in practice. While several websites did not yet include a link since the tweet above was published a couple of hours ago, several of them already did. For instance, the following websites using .CO.ZA domain names all have a link and prominent reference to the COVID-19 website clearly visible:
I found it interesting that the government is able to require all websites using the ccTLD to include a link to a government operated website. This is certainly going to be a great way to create awareness about the government’s website and it will likely draw considerable traffic.
Hopefully you and your family are staying safe and healthy.
Why doesn’t the government confiscate http://www.CoronaVirus.co.za like Spain did:
https://www.thedomains.com/2020/03/19/coronavirus-spain/
That http://www.CoronaVirus.co.za owner seems like a real jerk since he mentions http://www.sacoronavirus.co.za, but it’s not clickable.
Also, I don’t see the http://www.sacoronavirus.co.za link at http://www.Google.co.za as of yet. Why should Google be exempt, right?
This requirement was just made, so it will likely take some time to implement.
Why would Google need time to implement this with their 24/7 operations/staffing? They should have done it right away to set a good example.
Unused domain may use domain forwarding to send traffic (if any) direct to coronavirus za website. I am forwarding one of my domain to who.int