.yokohama Domain
Yokohama's Official City Domain
Register your .yokohama domain from just £19.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included with every domain.
This domain has registration restrictions
Anyone worldwide may register, but names under three characters and Yokohama place names are held back by the registry. Read the full eligibility rules.
What is a .yokohama domain?
The .yokohama domain is the city-level TLD for Yokohama, Japan's second-largest city with 3.7 million residents. Sitting just south of Tokyo in the Greater Tokyo metropolitan area, Yokohama is a major port city and commercial centre. Managed by GMO Registry, .yokohama is open to worldwide registration. The city is known for its Chinatown (Japan's largest), its waterfront, and its role as a hub for automotive, shipping, and biotech industries.
Who should register .yokohama?
Yokohama-based businesses, Japanese port and shipping companies, tourism operators, and international brands with Yokohama operations.
Why choose .yokohama?
- Official domain for Japan's second-largest city
- Open to worldwide registration
- Yokohama is a major port and commercial centre
- Managed by GMO Registry
Who runs .yokohama, and since when
Registry data from the .yokohama delegation record held by IANA, which maintains the internet's root zone. Eligibility comes from the registry's own policy, and the prices are ours.
- Extension type
- Generic (gTLD)
- Registry operator
- GMO Registry, Inc.
- The organisation that runs the extension
- In the root zone since
- 2014
- Delegated 27 March 2014
- Who can register
- Open to anyone worldwide, with no Yokohama connection required
- Checked against the registry's own policy
- Our price
- £19.99 a year
- Ex VAT. Renews at the same price
Why anyone can register a .yokohama city domain
City domains usually come with a catch, which is that the city wants to know who you are. The .yokohama domain does not. GMO Registry's own registration policy settles it in one line: any natural person or entity is eligible, allocated first come, first served. No address test, no proof of trading in Kanagawa, no form beyond the ordinary order.
What the city did keep is a reserved list. Ward, town and village names inside Yokohama are held back, along with strings tied to tourism and transport and other names treated as public interest, and that list is revised at the city government's request rather than the registry's. Two-character labels are reserved as well, and every ASCII name has to be at least three characters, so the tightest abbreviations were gone before the extension opened.
Treat the geography as branding rather than search. Google's own guidance on multi-regional sites says domains associated with a geographical region are generally treated as generic top-level domains, much like .com or .org, so a .yokohama address tells a human reader a great deal and tells a crawler almost nothing. That is fine when recognition is the point.
Who is allowed to register .yokohama?
Anyone worldwide may register, but names under three characters and Yokohama place names are held back by the registry.
- Who may register
- GMO Registry states that any natural person or entity is eligible, on a first come, first served basis. There is no local address requirement and nothing to supply. The registry says broad registration outside the city is part of the point, because the aim is to promote Yokohama as a brand.
- Three-character minimum
- An ASCII .yokohama name must be at least 3 characters and no more than 63. It cannot begin or end with a hyphen, and it cannot carry two consecutive hyphens in the third and fourth positions unless the label encodes an internationalised name.
- Reserved place and civic names
- Ward, city, town and village names in Yokohama are withheld, along with strings related to tourism and transport and other names held to be in the public interest. Two-character labels and country and territory names are reserved too. The list is revised at the city government's request, so it can change.
- If the name you want is reserved
- It shows as unavailable rather than being taken off you later, so you find out before you pay. The registry may release reserved names at a later date, and may hold others back as premium names to be auctioned or sold, at its own discretion.
Rules taken from the GMO Registry .yokohama registration policies. Registry policy can change, so check before you buy if the answer matters to you.
Not sure whether you qualify? Ask us before you order and we will check the registry rules with you. We would rather answer the question than take an order the registry will refuse.
Is .yokohama the right choice for you?
We would rather sell you the right extension once than the wrong one twice.
.yokohama works well if
- You trade from a real address in Yokohama and you would rather have the city in the address bar than buried three paragraphs into the about page.
- You are naming an event, a venue or a district guide, and the URL needs to say where it is without a word of explanation.
- You are a brand with a Yokohama arm, and the parent already owns the .com, so this is a regional site rather than a front door.
Look elsewhere if
- You want the extension to help you rank in Japan. Google treats region-associated extensions like this one as generic, so it sets no country target at all.
- Your customers are British. A .yokohama costs twice what a .co.uk does every year and means nothing to a buyer in Kettering.
- You need a very short name. Two-character labels are reserved and the floor is three characters, so the shortest ideas are not on offer.
Trading mainly in Britain? A .co.uk costs less and carries the UK signal in Google that this one cannot. See .co.uk pricing.
.yokohama vs .com: which should you register?
A .com says nothing about where you are, and that is the whole point of it. A .yokohama says one thing loudly and nothing else, which is the whole point of that. Neither buys you a search advantage, because both are generic to Google, so the decision comes down to what a reader thinks the moment they see it.
The arrangement that tends to work is the .com as the permanent address and the .yokohama on the campaign, the venue, the district guide or the local arm of a larger brand. Holding both and pointing one at the other costs a few pounds a year and ends the argument.
.yokohama domain questions, answered
What people ask us before registering a .yokohama domain.
Can't find what you're looking for?
Ask us directlyNo. GMO Registry's registration policy states that any natural person or entity is eligible, and sets no local address requirement of any kind. That is deliberate rather than an oversight: the registry says broad registration and usage outside the city is part of promoting Yokohama worldwide. Nobody asks for proof when you order and nobody checks afterwards. The one thing you cannot have is a reserved name, which covers Yokohama ward and town names and strings tied to tourism and transport.
It gives you no ranking advantage on its own. Google's guidance on managing multi-regional sites says domains associated with a geographical region are generally treated as generic top-level domains, much like .com or .org, so the extension sets no country target. Japanese search visibility comes from the language of the pages, local links and business listings, not the letters after the dot. Register a .yokohama because a human reader recognises the city, not because a crawler will.
Three characters. The registry's syntax rules set a minimum length of three and a maximum of 63 for ASCII names, and two-character labels are reserved under the registry agreement, so no one-letter or two-letter .yokohama exists to buy. Hyphens cannot start or end the name, and cannot sit in both the third and fourth positions unless the label encodes an internationalised name. Japanese-script names run under a separate policy and start at one character.
Included with Your .yokohama Domain
DNS Management
Full DNS zone editor to manage A, CNAME, MX, TXT, and all record types.
Email Forwarding
Set up professional email addresses and forward to any inbox.
Auto-Renewal
Never lose your domain with automatic renewal protection.
Free 10GB Mailbox
One 10GB mailbox (POP3/IMAP) included with every domain, on any TLD.
Other Geographic Domains Extensions
Register your .yokohama domain today
Secure your .yokohama domain from just £19.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included.
