What Domain Extensions Are Available

Domain Name : What Do The Various Domain Extensions Mean

Everyone knows .COM, the unrestricted domain extension for companies or commercial enterprises that is the most recognized TLD on the web. Most people in our country also recognize .CA, the ccTLD that represents Canada.

But what about all the other domain extensions out there? .ORG, .NET, .MOBI, .TV, .TEL, .BIZ, in fact there are over 280 different domain extensions delegated globally. What do they all mean and whats their relative importance to Canadian small businesses? Its important that a small business understand what its options are for developing and marketing their brand in the online arena.

According to the latest Domain Name Industry Brief , the first quarter of 2010 ended with more than 193 million domain names registered worldwide, an increase of 11 million registrations or 6% from 2009.

The following are the most popular domain extensions in the world ranked by number of total registrations Source: VeriSign Domain Name Industry Brief

According to data from Zooknic, Canadas .CA ranks #15 as of March 31, 2010.

Domain names are divided into 2 main categories, gTLDs or generic top-level domains and ccTLDs or country code top level domains which represent a country designation.

There are currently 20 gTLDs in the world. The following shows what each represents:

There are currently over 250 ccTLDS :

• .CO
• .TV
• .FM
• .LY
• .WS
• .ME
• .CC

The Most Popular Cctld Domain Extensions

Verisign claims that the most popular country-specific domain extension is .tk, which the official domain of the group of atolls, Tokelau. This is according to their survey data . Although only about 1,500 people live in the territory, there are about 27.5 million .tk domains. Many website operators resort to a domain from Tokelau, as these can be registered free of charge and in a relatively simple manner. In contrast, the domains of North Korea are not exactly easy to come by. The secretive state seems to use only about 28 domains.

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Because .com is used so widely in the USA, the .us ccTLD doesnt appear on this list. This isnt really a reflection of how active US citizens are online though, as about 88.5% of the US population use the internet, according to figures from statista. Thats a huge number within a huge population! Compare this to China, which ranks second on the above list: only 54.3% of the population are using the Internet, according to the CIA.

How Memorable Are Different Domain Extensions

An important factor for any URL is how easy it is to remember.

The question we wanted to answer is, are people more likely to remember URLs with some TLDs over others?

As you can see, yes they are:

The .com domain extension comes out on top here again, with a 44% memorability score.

That means people correctly remembered the .com URL 44% of the time.

Second place goes to .co again, but this time its a wider gap: with its 33% memorability score, .co is a full quarter less memorable than .com.

Comparing .com to its two traditional main competitors, .net and .org , you can see its not even close.

Interestingly, .biz has a score of 31% which is actually better than .us, .io, .net, and especially .blog .

I was also surprised to see .net perform so much worse on this test than .biz.

However, it makes sense considering that mental categorization is a major part of how memory works.

Perhaps people naturally put the .net TLD in the same mental category as .com: a general, fairly common TLD thats often used for commercial sites.

However, since .com is the most dominant TLD in that category, .net often gets mis-remembered as .com .

On the other hand, .biz may not fit into the same mental category as .net and .com.

Think about it: if you see example.com, example.net, and example.biz, doesnt the .biz version jump out at you a little?

That may be why .biz domains are more memorable despite being less trustworthy than .net ones.

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How Can We Help

If you have any further questions related to domain extensions, web-design or web-development get in touch with our team of experts. We know that when it comes to planning and creating the perfect website for your business it should never be a one-size-fits-all approach which is why all of our websites are bespoke and designed to meet the needs of your business and your customers.

Fraser Kerns

Fraser joined the Bright Design team as an SEO Executive. Hes responsible for identifying and implementing different strategies, techniques and tactics to achieve and exceed our client-partners objectives. Whether it be to increase traffic, lead generation or conversions, Fraser plays an important role in the marketing and delivery team.

Everything You Need To Know About Domain Extensions

Most people know a little about domain extensions. For example, you would be hard pressed to find someone that didnt know what .COM is. However, did you know that there are over 1,500 TLDs as of December 2018? Furthermore, .COM and .NET account for 50% of all domain name extensions registered worldwide!

To really understand what domain extensions mean and where they came from we have to drop back a little and take a look at the Internet and how it played a part in domain name extensions. We will also take a look at the domain extensions list and see how many there actually are, what they are used for, and what custom domain extensions mean.

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When People Remember The Top

This last factor is an interesting one:

When people remember the URL almost correctly when they remember the brand name but put the wrong domain extension at the end which domain extension do they say?

This helps us see how much of a bias people have in favor of each TLD.

For example, if the correct URL was mattressrankings dot net but they misremembered it as mattressrankings dot com instead, that would count as a point for the .com TLD.

The results of this test show an even bigger difference between .com vs other domains.

Heres the data:

First place again goes to .com, by far.

Out of all the wrong-but-almost-right answers, 57 of them said .com instead of the correct TLD. Thats 3.8 times more often than the next highest, .org.

This is strong evidence that .com domains are still thought of as the default.

When people arent sure which TLD a URL uses, theyre much more likely to guess .com than anything else.

The distant second place goes to .org, which people guessed only 15 times: 26% as often as they guessed .com.

Not shown on the chart above is the .co.uk domain suffix, which received two guesses but wasnt a subject of this study .

Key takeaway: People are 3.8 times more likely to assume a URL ends in .com than in anything else.

Different Types Of Domain Name Extensions Available

Today there are thousands of different domain name extensions for you to choose from. Luckily, not all of these will apply to your website, so theres no need to get overwhelmed in your search for the perfect TLD.

Heres a breakdown of the most common domain name extensions available today that you can use for your new website:

• .com This is by far the most popular and commonly used TLD. It was initially created for commercial organizations, but there are no restrictions on who can utilize this extension.
• .net This extension is shorthand for the word network and was initially created for companies dealing with networking technologies and internet infrastructure. Today there are no restrictions on who can utilize this domain extension and its typically the number one choice after .com.
• .org This extension was first created to be used by nonprofits. However, this is no longer enforced and is a common TLD for education-based websites, schools, and more.
• .co This is a relatively new extension, but youll come across this one a ton in the startup space. Its become known as the domain name extension that represents a company.

There are probably dozens of other domain name extensions thatll apply to your new website.

When you register a domain here at HostGator, youll be able to see which domain name extensions are available. For example, heres a quick look of the available extensions for the domain bakecookies.com:

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Signatures And Zone Signing

To limit replay attacks, there are not only the normal DNS TTL values for caching purposes, but additional timestamps in RRSIG records to limit the validity of a signature. Unlike TTL values which are relative to when the records were sent, the timestamps are absolute. This means that all security-aware DNS resolvers must have clocks that are fairly closely in sync, say to within a few minutes.

These timestamps imply that a zone must regularly be re-signed and re-distributed to secondary servers, or the signatures will be rejected by validating resolvers.

The Most Popular Domain Extensions 2021

One of the oldest TLDs in the world is still the most popular domain extension after more than 30 years: .com. Originally intended as an abbreviation of commercial and planned only for companies, many users now associate .com domains with websites in the USA. This is for good reason, as the domain extension .us, which was actually intended for the USA, isnt used as much as .com, although .us is on the rise for government websites, alongside .gov.

This ranking is taken from Analysis by W3Techs.com. This service provider measures published websites and tries to filter spam websites from its statistics. This therefore sometimes results in different statistics to other publications. Another source worth checking out is the Domain Name Industry Brief from Verisign, the operator of the .com domains.

No matter which statistics you look up, more than half of all Internet addresses have the extension .com. Also high up in the rankings are the other two generic top-level domains .net and .org. Like .com, these have been around since 1985. The other domain extensions in the top 10 are primarily country code TLDs , which are country-specific. .us isnt high up on the list at all possibly because most websites in the USA will use .com.

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Domain Name System Security Extensions

The Domain Name System Security Extensions is a suite of extension specifications by the Internet Engineering Task Force for securing data exchanged in the Domain Name System in Internet Protocol networks. The protocol provides cryptographic authentication of data, authenticated denial of existence, and data integrity, but not availability or confidentiality.

Why Choose A Contact Domain Extension

One of the most important pages on your website is the ‘Contact Us’ page. Make it easier for your customers to find your contact info from anywhere on the Web by securing a .CONTACT domain extension. .CONTACT may be used for any purpose, by any business, group, or individual, making this new TLD a great option for anyone looking to increase conversion rates by providing better contact accessibility.

• Use .CONTACT as part of your custom email address as a clear way to differentiate communications from your customer support or sales teams.
• There are less than 100 registry-reserved Premium Domains for .CONTACT, giving you more opportunities to score a short, keyword rich domain at the standard price.
• .CONTACT is a TrueName domain, so it includes phishing protection at no additional cost.

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What Are The 5 Most Popular Generic Top Level Domain Extensions

The most common domain extension by far is the .com. The .com extension is the daddy of them all. However, .com isnt the only popular top-level domain out there on the web. There are now hundreds of domain extensions out there available to buy from domain registrars. Domain registration is incredibly easy and can take less than 2 minutes to complete.

The most common types of gTLDs are as follows.

.com

.gov

New Domain Extensions Available

Recently, many new gTLDs have been created and made available to buy since the original set of extensions were produced. The idea behind them was to create more opportunities for people to create their own unique presence on the internet and to take pressure off of the original set of domain extensions.

Some of these new gTLDs were created to serve both a broad use worldwide, and to go niche on special interest groups, such as .ninja, .design, .kitchen and many many more.

Here are a few more examples of new domain extensions available to buy.

• .biz

The full list of TLDs is just too long to include on this page, but you can head over to NameCheap to see all the available TLDs.

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What Is A Domain Name Extension

• Domains

Prior to the early 1980s, in order to visit a host on a network, the user would be required to type in an IP address, which is a numerical string of code consisting of digits and periods. Computers on this early network were able to communicate and locate one another using these numerical Internet Protocol Addresses.

Since, at the time, there were not many computers on the internet, this system was manageable. With that said, it was still not easy nor efficient because you needed a way to keep track of every single IP address in the network. If you did not have the IP address, there was no way to visit or communicate with the desired website. An early internet user could not query a site, or go surfing the web as we do today, rather you were restricted to the sites that you already knew how to locate.

Basically, it was equivalent to having a map of a foreign country, but that map only listed the directions to a handful of cities. This limited where you could go and made discovery outside of the context of the given directions impossible. Thankfully, computer scientists of the Internet Engineering Task Force gathered together and decided to simplify the system.

Domain.com has over 300 domain extensions to choose from to help set your website apart from the rest. It all starts with a great domain.