In a website address like https://www.companyname.com, the “.com” is the top level domain name. There are other top level domain names that common like .net and .org. Recently, the number of top level domain names has expanded greatly. Wikipedia explains top level domain names in greater detail.
Most people assume all websites just end in “.com” but when you choosing your domain name, you might want to select something other than “.com”. First, there are country specific domain names but unless you live in that country, you probably don’t want to use one like “.uk” for United Kingdom. There is “.us” but it hasn’t been used in United States for businesses. The original top level domain names were:
- .com – commercial
- .org – organization
- .net – network
- .edu – education
- .gov – government
- .mil – military
From this list, it is easy to see why most businesses went with “.com”.
But, now there are many more top level domain name to select from. Hover, a company that registers domain name, has a list of the domain names that it sells. You will notice that there are many price points and that the price may be different to register the domain name and then to renew it, which is annually.
