Domain Names

.com, .net, .org — are among the first registered top level domains and have existed since 1985

.com is the absolute leader in the number of registrations as of 2016, comprising about half of all domain names on the Internet. It was used for registering websites of commercial organizations only until the mid-1990s. But then this restriction was removed and now .com is available for registration. This extension falls within the jurisdiction of the USA and now has about 120 million websites registered with it.

.net — is the next biggest domain among the listed ones and had 15.79 million registrations as of March 2016. It does not have any restrictions concerning registration although initially .net was intended for net-related organizations (providers, network technical support, etc.).

.org is also a widely used extension and has 10.98 million registered websites as of March 2016. This extension which was originally designed for general purpose organizations is now available for everyone.

hese extensions are rather “young” as compared to the above ones. .tv, registered in 1996 as the national domain of Tuvalu, is the oldest among them. Since the name is similar to TV (television) it was bought from the government of Tuvalu back in 1998 by a businessman for $50 million and is now available for registration under the jurisdiction of the USA.

.biz and .info were created in 2001 in order to decrease the load on .com, .net and .org. The first one was intended for business organizations while the second one was meant for online information resources. Both of them do not have any restrictions for registration. .info accounts for about 5 million websites while .biz. has about 2 million.

.tel is a unique domain as it associates contact details (phone number, address, e-mail, skype, location on the map, etc.) and key text phrases to the domain name in the DNS. In fact, this extension was put into operation in 2008 though there had been some attempts before that. Since 2009 .tel has been available for registration and provides certain benefits for website owners including fast website indexing by the search engines, fast loading times of pages, the possibility to specify geographic coordinates of a facility to be shown on Google maps, and some others.

.pro came to be in 2004 and was not available for public registration until 2015. Originally, the extension was intended for specialized professional organizations. Documents and licenses for certain activities were required for registration.

For example, owners of medical or educational centers, law firms or notary offices could use .pro extension for their websites and benefit from the fact that the website domain name itself is indicative of their conducting professional licensed activities.

However, in November 2015 this restriction was removed and now .pro domain is available for everyone.

.be, .us, .eu — are national domains of Belgium, USA and European Union respectively

.us was introduced in 1985 and now has about 1.6 million domain names. There is a second level domain for each state (for example, .al.us for Alabama, .fl.us for Florida, etc.).

.eu was launched in 2005 and now has more than 2 million registrations.

.be is often used not only for national audience of Belgium but also for continued notation of certain second level domain name signatures. For example, youtu.be, yt.be.

Some Ideas on Choosing a Domain Name

Don’t know how to choose a suitable domain for your website? Follow our recommendations.

• Select a domain name based on the name of your company and your area of expertise. If the name of your company is easy to remember, consists of one or two words, is not likely to be confused with similar names and reflects the essence of your activities, you should use it for your domain name. Especially when you sell various products, render different types of services, etc.
• If you sell very common products or the name of your company can be found in other areas, it is recommended that you choose a domain name by reference to your key product or service or some of your specific features. For example, you can choose flowersdelivery.com instead of just flowers.com. Then, visitors will understand at once that you do not only sell flowers but deliver them as well.
• A domain name which consists of two words can be divided with a dash or merged into a single word. It is better to register both variants but if it is impossible, opt for the name without a dash. It is not recommended that more than three words are united into a single domain name.
• Try to find a short and comprehensible domain name so that it is difficult to make a mistake in it. Such names are easy to say or write which means that it will be easier for a visitor to remember your website and tell his or her friends about it.
• If possible, register a few domain names which are spelled or pronounced in a similar way: this will help to eliminate some mistakes users may make when typing the domain name in the address bar. The same applies to domain extensions. Register your domain name with some of the most popular extensions, such as .net, .org, .info, and .biz, and redirect to the main domain: yourdomain.com.
• Remember that the period of your domain name registration needs to be extended. Registration is usually provided for a year and after that you have to extend it, otherwise your domain name will cease to exist. Thus, it may be given to another user who may demand an amount a few times more than the initial one to return it to you.