Types of Domain

Are you interested in checking out different types of domains?

Are you curious about what sort of domain name would match the best for your website?

We have got answers to all these queries. Let us shed some light on what a domain name is, what it does and why it is important to a website.

What do you think is most important for a customer to visit your physical store? It definitely is the location of your store. One cannot visit your store or purchase anything from you until and unless s/he has your store location. They can make purchases only after they arrive at your store in a specific location. In the same way, your online business also has its own address and that address is called a domain name. To get access to your website or to find out your store online a customer needs to type-in your website address (domain name) on a browser address bar, and then it will load your website on the browser.

The domain names are formed with the words that depict your brand and they are unique from each other. The domain name used by one cannot be used by any other. To get started with an ideal domain name you need to register it first.

A domain name is always followed by a domain name extension. The domain name extensions that are currently available on the internet are .com, .net, .org, .edu, .gov, etc. However, the mostly used one is .com. In this article we will discuss different types of domains.

Top Level Domain (TLD) or domain name extensions

Top-level domains are the ones that come immediately after the primary domain name. For example the TLD of our website ‘makeify.com’ is .com.

The TLDs include .com, .org, .net, .edu, .gov, .mil, .io and many more. All of these domains have their own importance and purpose. .com was the first top-level domain to be used. It had become popular by the mid-1990s. Most of businesses used the domain for their websites. Likewise, .org was mostly used by non-profit organizations in the past and is used by many businesses too these days. .edu is used by educational institutions like schools, universities and colleges. And the governmental offices, agencies or organizations which are directly linked with the government use .gov for their websites.

Country Code Top Level Domain (ccTLD)

As the name defines itself, the country code top-level domain refers to the domain which itself denotes the country or a geographical location where it is established or where it belongs to. The country code top-level domains are formed with two letters and they distinguish one country from another. There are multiple country code top-level domains such as .ca, .uk, .au, .co, .de, .eu, .np and .in. .ca represents websites in Canada, .uk represents the United Kingdom, .au represents Australia, .co represents Colombia, .de represents Germany, .eu represents Europe, .np represents Nepal and .in represents India. These are just a few examples. There are more than 200 ccTLDs all around the world.

Generic Top Level Domain (gTLD)

The generic top-level domain consists of three or more characters and is one of the categories of top-level domains in the Domain Name System (DNS). These are managed and maintained by the Internet Assigned Number Authority. These domains were first introduced in the 80s, as soon as the internet was introduced. They helped the very first generation of internet users who were willing to build websites for their businesses. The most popular gTLDs in current times are the domains such as .com, .org, .net, .info, and .edu.

Second Level Domain(SLD)

A second level domain is the word or the text that is followed by the top-level domain. It lies on the left of the domain extension. SLD, in general, is the brand name of a business. For example: in ‘dell.com’ ‘dell’ is a second level domain and a brand name too and it is followed by the top level domain .com.

Second-level domains make it easy for your customers to remember your website name as it is linked with your brand or business name.

These second-level domains can even be followed by country-code top-level domains. For example: in daraz.com.np daraz is a second-level domain, .com is top-level domain and .np is country code top-level domain.

Third Level Domain

Now let’s get some idea about the third-level domain. The third-level domain is the one that comes before the second-level domain. They are also known as subdomains.

Have you ever noticed that when you open a site on your browser, there is ‘www’ in the search bar, just before the second-level domain? Yes, that ‘www’ is the third-level domain. However, some large organizations may not have the same third-level domain for each department or webpage. They may use ‘www1’ or ‘www2’ to maintain or balance the load of traffic on their websites.

The most popular third-level domain is ‘www’, however, customized third-level domains are also used throughout the world for some specific purpose.

These are the types of domains.