  Dot-science was launched in 2015 as a new academic top-level domain (TLD)
aimed to provide 'a dedicated, easily accessible location for global Internet
users with an interest in science'. The main objective of this work is to find
out the general scholarly usage of this top-level domain. In particular, the
following three questions are pursued: usage (number of web domains registered
with the dot-science), purpose (main function and category of websites linked
to these web domains), and impact (websites' visibility and authority). To do
this, 13,900 domain names were gathered through ICANN's Domain Name
Registration Data Lookup database. Each web domain was subsequently
categorized, and data on web impact were obtained from Majestic's API. Based on
the results obtained, it is concluded that the dot-science top-level domain is
scarcely adopted by the academic community, and mainly used by registrar
companies for reselling purposes (35.5% of all web domains were parked).
Websites receiving the highest number of backlinks were generally related to
non-academic websites applying intensive link building practices and offering
leisure or even fraudulent contents. Majestic's Trust Flow metric has been
proved an effective method to filter reputable academic websites. As regards
primary academic-related dot-science web domain categories, 1,175 (8.5% of all
web domains registered) were found, mainly personal academic websites (342 web
domains), blogs (261) and research groups (133). All dubious content reveals
bad practices on the Web, where the tag 'science' is fundamentally used as a
mechanism to deceive search engine algorithms.
