Top Level Domains and their importance

What is a top-level domain, in simple terms it’s the part of the url after the last ‘.’ , so in my case my blogs url is http://keithrozario.com , my top-level domain would be .com.

There’s a long list of top level domains besides the regular ‘.com’ that you should be aware of if you’re hoping to start a website. Consider the case of Guy Kawasaki who bought 55 domains for his startup truemors, just to prevent cyber squatters from getting their hands on an obscure truemors url. If that doesn’t convince you, take a look at one of my favorite blogs, the EvilHRLady who in her own words:

Finally, after 5 years, I finally bit the bullet and paid money for my very own URL. www.EvilHRLady.org

The .com is taken and they want way too much money for it, so I say, have fun with that!

So the moral seems to be, go for the ‘.com’ early, it doesn’t cost much if no one owns it. Otherwise you can always opt for the .org or .net. If on the other hand some one squatting on a url you want, there are a whole load of options.

Who might also be interested to know the way things work for the .tv domain:

The domain is currently operated by dotTV, a Verisign company; the Tuvalu government owns twenty percent of the company. In 2000, Tuvalu negotiated a contract leasing its Internet domain name “.tv” for $50 million in royalties over a 12-year period.^[1] The Tuvalu government receives a quarterly payment of US$1 million for use of the top-level domain.

And one of my favorite top-level domains belong .io belongs to the Indian Ocean.

So which top-level domain should you choose…it really is entirely up to you. Although I do enjoy some of the domains that extend from the name, consider http://googlepleasehire.me or one of my favorites note taking apps http://justpaste.it, the top-level domain (the words after the ‘.’) complement the name (the words before the ‘.’)

So where do you find the list of all the top-level domains you can opt for, wikipedia of course, and the link is here. However, be wary, that’s a whole load of top-level domains you can buy, but your web host may only support a couple of them, so you’re left with some options. Either opt for web host that have support for that domain or buy a domain and re-direct users to a separate domain hosting on your host? It’s not pretty.

Obviously some countries have it better than others, Malaysia has the .my top-level domain and Montegenegro has the .me (both pretty nive ones),  India has the .in and The Federated states of Micronesia who somehow manage to snag the top-level domain every radio station wants, the .fm top-level domain.

So hurry up before it’s too late, and snag that domain you’ve always wanted from your favorite webhost, personally I’d start with dreamhost.com, but that’s just me.