'Sooners' in .ASIA land rush vie for 'girls,' 'fun,' and 'gold'

The DotAsia Organization has received more than a half million .asia domain applications during a three-week "landrush" period that started in late February.

Buy.asia was the domain that received the most applications in landrush with more than 400 applicants, while Sex.asia received the most applications in the "sunrise" period of filing. Hot.asia, Gold.asia, Fun.asia and Girl.asia round out the top five sought after domains during the Landrush period. DotAsia reported 45,697 domains had more than one landrush application and will end up in auction.

To help reduce the number of problems that could arise during the registration, DotAsia made domain registration a three-step process to limit chaos. Government agencies and any company with registered trademarks were allowed to register any domains related to their trademarks. The second stage allowed any company operating in Asia to register a domain name, even if the company didn't have trademarks. The third period, which ended yesterday, allowed any company or regular user apply for a .asia domain.

The sunrise period of filing is prior to the landrush, where 30,000 early applications could be filed only by companies and organizations. The landrush is when everyone becomes eligible to register or submit an application for a URL without restrictions.

More than 70 countries spread across Asia, the Middle East, Australia and the Pacific Rim are eligible to use the .asia TLD, ICANN reported before the landrush started in late February.

The .asia registry will launch on March 26, when the domain names will become available to parties on a first-come-first served basis.