Domain Extensions Exposed & Explained

In this day and age of the internet world there are literally tons of different domain extensions being used. Almost all the countries have their own domain extensions and there are new ones coming out every year.

Even though millions of site owners choose to use a domain extension that doesn’t fit it doesn’t seem to matter as long as good SEO techniques are used. However, if you are looking to buy a new domain name for your new website, I will be explaining the basic steps you should follow in order to choose the correct extension for it!

.Com Domain Name Extension stands for “Commercial” such as companies. This is the most widely used and recognized domain extension in the world. It is the best usually the best extension you could possibly get. Even if you choose to use another domain name extension you should still buy the .com to prevent loss of web traffic. For example if you are using a .net or .org extension many people will accidently try to access your site using “.com” before any other extension.

.NET Domain Name Extension stands for the word Network. Currently it is the most popular top-level domain name extension used next to .com. Originally it was created for network and internet providers however anyone has access to buy these domains. This extension is recommended only if the .com is taken.

.ORG Domain Name Extension stands for the word Organization. This extension is widely used by non-profits groups or trade organizations. But as more and more .com’s are registered there seems to be an increasing number of non related sites using the .org extension.

.EDU Domain Name Extension stands for the word Education is vastly used by educational institutions. You must have or be an educational institution to obtain an .edu domain name. .Edu’s seem to rank very well in search engines especially in Google where you can see the effects first hand.

.INFO Domain Name Extension stands for the word Information. It’s a domain extension intended for informational websites. This is also a good alternative for .com domain. .Info’s are cheap at most registers some being as low as $1. Because of the low cost it is also great to use as a personal or testing website.

.GOV Domain Extension stands for the word Government. You cannot buy these domains you must be a register agency of the government. Normally these domains are used by the US government. From what I have seen search engines seem to index and rank these sites well.

.BIZ Domain Extension stands for the word Business. This extension was created specifically for businesses. Although the domain extension itself might make more sense for a business the .com still over powers this extension to the everyday person. .Biz’s were created to provide an alternative to businesses when the .com was no longer available.

.MOBI Domain Extension stands for the word mobile. This extension is for sites built for easy viewing by mobile devices. This is not required to create a mobile device site, most businesses use a sub folder for the mobile version of their sites such as www.yourdomain.com/m.

.US Domain Extension stands for the United States. This is an extension generally used by American businesses. Since this extension is not used often it has one of the largest databases of available domain names.

ccTLDs Domains – Country Code Top Level Domains
Domain extensions such as .co.uk, .co.in, .co.nz, .co.kr are country specific. For example if your site is providing business or information only for the people for Korea then you should obtain a .co.kr. Generally having a domain related to the country will help in the local search engines being used. I would still recommend getting the .com and redirecting it to your site as this will ensure that you don’t lose any traffic. See a full list of the country domain extensions.

If you see an extension not explained here feel free to bring it up in the comment’s and I’ll be sure to respond.