Here’s something to think about, China’s TLD (.cn) is boasts the largest number of TLDs and is one of the top spam TLDs as well.

Multilingual Search has the top TLD by numbers details:

For a number of years, Germany (.de) was the world’s most popular ccTLD in terms of registrations.

But about two years ago China made its ccTLD a lot more affordable and easier to get. Since then, the country has been registering roughly 20,000 country codes a day. The country went from 2 million registrations to 10 million registrations in an amazing 12 months.

Within the past two months, China overtook Germany for the top spot, with approximately 11.4 million registrations. It’s safe to say that Germany isn’t going to take that lead back.

John Andrews includes info on the top spam TLDs:

A security firm is releasing a report stating .hk, .cn, and .info domains are the most “dangerous” when it comes to threats of malware. Whether you like McAfee or not, search engines like Google and Yahoo and MSN are very likely to incoporate this “trust” factor into their operations, if they haven’t already done that. We know Google doesn’t like .info as much as .com, and this new “evidence” appears to confirm whatever rationale Google might give for that. I fully expect Google to have more data available on the topic than McAfee anyway.

Of all “.hk” sites McAfee tested, it flagged 19.2 percent as dangerous or potentially dangerous to visitors; it flagged 11.8 percent of “.cn” sites and 11.7 percent of “.info” sites that way.

A simple math reveals that China has about 1.35 million spam domains on .cn (we could say that China has even more if you want to be technical and note that Hong Kong is a part of China, but let’s focus on just .cn domains here).

So, here’s the dilemma for trying to rank in China:

  • Want to rank well on search engines in China (Google)? Don’t get a .cn domain to avoid spam penalty.
  • Want to rank well on search engines in China (by Chinese government)? Get a .cn domain to avoid government penalty.

Solution:

  • Get a .中国 (zhongguo) domain. Oh, you expected this to be available now?