Choosing a Domain Level and Type

Top Level Domains

Top level domain name selection rules have lost their validity over the years with the dramatic increase in applications for domain names.  Therefore consideration should be given to registering the same Domain Name under a variety of level types.  

Currently, the general public understands and relates to .com. Below are the current top-level domain types along with the types of organizations for which they are intended to be associated:

• .com is for commercial organizations

• .org is for nonprofit organizations

• .mil is for military organizations

• .net is for networking organizations

• .edu is for 4-year educational organizations

Internet surfers understand and easily associate the .com domain.  Obviously thousands .com addresses cannot be provided each without quickly running short of available names.  In 2000 alone, over 80,000 domain names were registered.  To respond to this dramatic increase in top-level domains, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) approved the recent release of the following top level Domains, which are now also available:

This should relieve some of the shortage for top level domains.  However, there may be some difficulty in getting web surfers to become familiar with its use.

Sub-Domains

Sub-domains are those domain names which are under a top level domain.  For example: our web site mysterybooks.com is a top level domain name.  Should we choose to have an entire web site dedicated to Sherlock Holmes, we might choose a sub-domain of either mysterybooks.com/sherlockholmes, or mysterybooks.com/~sherlockholmes or even sherlockholmes.mysterybooks.com.  

What is the problem with this level of domain?  Again, some search engines do not include sub-domains in there searches.  Additionally, we would be "renting" server space whoever owns mysterybooks.com. This space may be cheaper than hosting our own top level domain, since the mysterybooks.com folks are also renting to mysterybooks.com/~nancydrew, mysterybooks.com/~stephenking, and myterybooks.com/~maybeyou.  These are all worthy of consideration when choosing your domain name.

Success on the Internet has been demonstrated to be associated with Top-level domains; specifically .com.