Domain name extensions

August, 2021 domain image

Intro

You may have seen that websites generally have .com as domain extension. Do you know the meaning of .com ? It stands for commercial and is recognized worldwide. Earlier, it was mostly used by the companies rather than the other domain extensions.

Who controls .com?

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) controls the .com domain extension. ICANN gave the control of technical operations to Verisign and people can buy .com domain from different registrars like godaddy, namecheap, etc..

Domain breakdown

A Domain name has two parts : one is the list of characters called second-level domain and the other is the domain ending such as .com. Some domains refer to specific countries like .fr refers to France, .in refers to India, etc..

Meaning of different domain endings

.org - It stands for organization and earlier it was issued to non-profit organizations only. But now it's accessible to anyone.
.co - It is a country code domain extension for columbia launched in 2010. Due its cost effectiveness as compared to .com, it gained a lot of popularity and is used commonly.
.me - It is also a country code domain extension for montenegro. After it was publicly available many companies used it because of its catchy name.
.net - It stands for network and was made for companies in technology field or IT industry.

Conclusion

So, finally you will think which domain extension should be preferred. It depends majorly on the type of company or organization, but .com is generally preferred in most cases. Companies who target the audience of a specific country they use country codes as domain endings. Besides all of these, a website's success doesnot primarily depend on the domain extensions.