Lesson 9: Choosing The Right Domain Name Extension

domain photo

First Published: 9th of August, 2018 by Patrick Carpen.

Last updated: April 26, 2021 at 3:52 am

Your domain name extension is what your domain name ends with. For example…

.com

.org

.net

.us

…are all “domain name extensions.”

So what’s the difference and which one should you choose for your next domain name? It depends on a lot of factors including your personal taste. Before we go any further, let me give you a little rundown on what some of these extensions stand for.

.com – commercial – this tells the world that your website is set up for commercial purposes or to make money.

.org – this tells the world that your website represents an organization – profitable or non-profitable.

.us – this tells the world that your website represents a United States company, enterprise, person, etc.

.net – this originally meant “network,” and was originally used by networking companies such as web hosting providers, internet service providers etc.  But nowadays, .net doesn’t specifically say anything about your website except that, as everybody already knows, it is on the internet. .Net domain names may be considered neutral and therefore  may be used for any purpose. So, if you’re building a commercial website and “yourdomain.com” is already taken, then you can consider the option of using “yourdomain.net” if that is available.

Let’s visit NameCheap, one of the most popular domain name registrars on the internet, and see what they are offering in terms of domain name extensions.

Let’s type in “brazilianproducts.com” and see what comes up.

As you can see from the screenshot, brazilianproducts.com is already taken by a domain name snatcher and is being offered for 5099.00 USD.

But NameCheap is telling us that we can get brazilianproducts.xyz for just 0.99 per year and also brazilian products.app for 14.99 per year.

Here is a screenshot of some of the other options NameCheap is offering.

And this:

And also:

Most of these extensions speak for themselves:

.co – A Company

.services – A “services” website.

.fun – A fun website.

.site – A website (obviously!).

.co.uk – A UK company.

As you can probably guess by now, there are no hard and fast rules for choosing a domain name extension, except in rare cases.

For example, you only choose a .us domain name if the website you are building represents an organization, business, product etc which is located, based, or originated in the United States – and therefore very relevant to that country, and this goes for all other “country specific domain name extensions.” A good example of a country-specific website is www.guyanasouthamerica.gy.

As for .com, even though it means commercial, you can choose it for just about any purpose because it’s the most popular domain name.

In fact, a long time ago, a non-technical guy came to me for help looking up a website. He said, “I want you to help access a .com.” The .com extension is so popular that it is interchangeable with “website”!

There is also .biz which means “business” and .xyz which means “whatever.”

Search engines don’t give much weight to domain name extensions when ranking websites. So, if your website ends in .com or .xyz, it will be given the same priority by Google and other search engine spiders when they search it for keywords.

What matters most is the content, layout, navigability, and relevance to the search term.

So now that you have a general idea of what domain name extensions stand for, let’s move on to the next lesson: “How to Register a Domain Name.”

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