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First of all, a domain is the name that your page has or will have; Choosing this name is not always easy, there are several domain extensions, it must be easy to remember, it must be available, and in some cases it must be related to the company's activity.
A domain is divided into two parts:
winkhosting.com
1. Domain name: Contains the main name of our website
2. TLD: Last segment of our domain name, among the main ones are: .com, .net, .org
The TLDs in turn have the following types with some examples:
- gTLD => Generic (.COM, .NET, .ORG…)
- sTLD => Restricted (.EDU, .GOV, .MIL…)
- ccTLD => Country codes (.CO, .PE, .MX…)
These domain extensions, which help classify page types, are governed by the recommendations given by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) through its IANA division (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority)
Knowing this and according to studies carried out by Verisign (https://www.verisign.com< /a>), we have that for the third quarter of 2019 the most used TLDs were:
Image taken from “The Domain Name Industry Brief; Vol16-Issue 4, Dec.2019”
In the same study, the percentages of the most registered domains (in the third quarter of 2019) were presented:
Image taken from “The Domain Name Industry Brief; Vol16-Issue 4, Dec.2019”
Knowing these statistics can be helpful when choosing our domain extension, since they tell us which ones have become more popular and therefore which ones will be better remembered (as they are used in more portals).
Within the IANA initiatives, new reserved TLDs have been included for company names (.google, .oracle, .honda), activities (.shop, .sport), sectors (.hotels, .motorcycles, . money), products among others; This has the advantage of a greater number of gTLDs due to the saturation of “.com”, but many times they can be difficult to remember until they become popular; the full list of gTLDs can be found on the IANA page (https: //www.iana.org/domains/root/db), knowing all the available TLDs you may have new ideas for your domain.
Which TLD should I choose?
The “.com” extension is still the most used on the internet, but the following question arises:
- what should be the TLD that I should use on my page?
The answer is given by the type of activity or the service you want to offer on your portal, in the case of commercial services the recommended one is still ".com" due to its high diffusion and recall; Currently there are about 360 million registered domains, and approximately more than 5 million are registered every 4 months, so if the domain you are looking for is not available, you should look for another TLD, or join the ".com" with the extension from your country (eg mysite.com.ar).
As we mentioned before, the TLDs can be consulted on the IANA page; Evaluate which one is in your language or which one you consider generates high recall among your current and potential clients; Do not forget that if necessary you can propose new acronyms to the IANA for future domain extensions.
Should I use a TLD with the extension of my country?
There is no single answer to this question; In our experience, we recommend that you have a domain with the extension of your country when you only plan to offer services, products, information, etc. in the country where you have your company. But this can be uncertain, since in the event that you undertakesa grows and expands to other countries (as you know your page can be seen all over the world) a "clean" domain without country extensions is recommended, and use the ccTLD extensions according to the store you have for that country.< /p>
We highlight the advantages of an extension with the name of the country:
- Generates identification, since it is known that it is a locally operating company that is easier to access than a company outside of an unknown location.
- Search engines associate it more quickly with your location, so they give it priority in searches.
- You can get more recall.
- You can divide and differentiate your stores by country; You will have observed this in sales stores such as Amazon, to cite an example.
Conclusion
As you may have seen, the “.com” extension is still the dominant one in the market; however, before the extension you should find a name that is easy to remember, and that identifies customers with your brand identity.
Avoid names that are too long, as well as extensions in languages ??other than your local language, the only exception to this is when it is a fairly popular extension with high diffusion; for example, .net
It may be that when looking for your brand name it is already registered by other people or companies, for several years some people took as a business to buy domains to resell them or companies with the same names had already registered it; Evaluate if it is possible to buy back the domain along with the extension you want.
