What is a TLD (Top-Level Domain)? Concepts Cleared

To establish a strong online presence for your company, selecting the appropriate domain name is crucial. In addition to selecting the appropriate name, you also need to select from a variety of appropriate domain extensions.

Top-level domains are the name given to these kinds of extensions (TLD). The most popular domain extension kinds are.com,.in,.biz, and so on.

We shall discuss top-level domains, their types, and a summary of the most well-known top-level domain names in this post.

What’s a Top-Level Domain?

The abbreviation for top-level domains is TLD. It is essentially the portion of a domain name that comes after the last dot. A terrific illustration of a TLD is a:.com. The letters that come after a website address are referred to as its top-level domain (TLD), to put it simply.

We refer to these as domain suffixes. Country-specific domains and generic domains are the two categories into which top-level domains are separated.

Top-level domains designate particular aspects of a website, such the company type, the nation of origin, and more. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, is responsible for allocating and overseeing TLDs.

However, there’s a list of all the valid TLDs is maintained by the IANA and is regularly updated. And most importantly, the TLD plays a very crucial role in the Domain Name System (DNS).

The IANA identifies three types of Top Level Domains

1. gTLD -Generic Top-Level Domains
2. sTLD -Sponsored Top-Level Domains
3. ccTLD – Country Code Top-Level Domains

Here is more brief information about the above top-level domain types. .

Different Types of Top-Level Domain Name Extensions

There is a wide range of domain extensions you’ll want to choose from depending on your business. It’s very important to choose a domain extension that goes well with your business.

Generic Domains (gTLD):

These are the domain names, anyone can register. Like, as .org for organizations and .biz for commercial businesses.

The most common uses of generic top-level domains are:

1. .com: for commercial websites
2. .net: for networks
3. .biz: for businesses
4. .org: for organizations

Country Code top-level domain (ccTLD):

It indicates a geographical area, for example, the United States, U.S. or United Kingdom, .uk.

A few examples of Country Code Top-Level domains are:

1. .us: United States
2. .ca : Canada
3. .uk: United Kingdom
4. .nl: Netherlands

Sponsored top-level domains (sTLD)

As the name suggests itself, sponsored top-level domains are those which are suggested and supervised by government organizations. These entities can be government agencies, businesses, or other types of organizations.

Some of the sponsored top-level domains are:

1. edu: for educational institutions
2. .gov: for government agencies
3. .travel: for travel industry businesses

Is it Possible to Change the Website TLD?

It is possible to change a TLD by setting up a URL redirect. This entire process will redirect all the traffic from the old TLD to the new one and ask the search engines if that change is constant.

Here’s a tip: Be very careful while migrating your site to a new web address. But make sure that you have a backup of your site to avoid traffic loss.

The Most Popular Top-Level Domains

.com is one of the most common TLDs, which has 52% of the total global share, and the other commonly used TLD is, .org, which has a global share of 5%. .com is one of the most trusted TLDs, making it easy to recognize a better URL.

Conclusion

Now, you’ve cleared the concept of the Top-Level domain, you want to register your own. You can register a top-level domain extension with Hostvento.

Also, we offer the domain name for free with web hosting plans. Choose the type of TLD that suits your site the best, offers credibility to your business and helps to boost your SEO rankings.