Everything You Need to Know About Website Domain Names

Due to the meteoric success of popular online vendors such as Amazon, business owners have seen the benefits a website can bring to their business in terms of sales and brand exposure.

Amazon was once a modest book retailer and now is the leader in e-commerce and one of the largest corporations in the world. Literary anything you put your mind to can be found and bought on Amazon.

The reason for that is the availability of the website itself, and we know that websites have the potential to tap into a wide range of demographics through SEO.

But in order to have a website, you need a domain name first. And in this article, we are going to be talking about everything you need to know about website domain names.

What is a Website Domain Name?

Before we start it’s crucial that you understand the difference between a website and a domain. A website is a virtual “storefront” for your business. It is an extension of your business which is located on the World Wide Web. A website is located by searching its domain name in a web browser. So with all this said, a domain is effectively the terminal point to a website. But before domain names were a thing, we used to locate websites through their IP addresses, which could be 32-bit or 128-bit.

Nowadays, we can still search for websites through its designated IP address, or we can use the more user-friendly option which is to enter the domain name in the web browser.

For a more in-depth explanation into domain names, hosting, and websites, you can learn more about it here.

Examples of domain names are

• www.google.com
• www.facebook.com
• www.twitter.com
• www.youtube.com

Domains and Extensions

A domain name cannot function without an extension, which comes after the name in your web browser. Since 1985, there were several domain extensions that were considered top-level. Some of them include:

• .com – Com is the most popular domain extension which refers to commerce and it’s usually associated with commercial websites. This extension is the most popular option for both small and big businesses.
• .edu – Short for education, this extension is predominantly used by educational institutes such as universities and schools. Most teachers and student mails, as well as, the school’s or university’s website address will usually end with the .edu extension. Examples would be [email protected], Harvard.edu, yale.edu, etc.
• .gov – This extension is intended only for government agencies, agents, government offices, and literary everything associated with the government. The white house has a website domain name which ends in .gov

These are some of the most popular website domain extensions out there, but there are others such as .int, .net, .org, .mil, which are intended for a variety of things. From all of these extensions, it’s safe to point out that the .com extension is the one you’ve seen the most. Read more here.

The domain name is a virtual extension to any company or brand. A website is the smartest investment you can make if you want to expose your company or brand to the internet.