Two primary categories of domains, or TLDs, are recognized by ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers)
Top-level generic domain (gTLD) The most popular kind of domain extension is a generic top-level domain (gTLD), which includes.com,.net,.org,.gov, and.edu. These TLDs specify a website’s intended use, for as for business (.com) or education (.edu).
New Generic Top-Level Domains (New gTLDs)
There are numerous new generic top-level domains (new gTLDs) that provide creative branding opportunities and niche targeting in addition to conventional gTLDs. With extensions like.app,.blog,.guru,.shop,.xyz,.co, and.online, people and companies may make more distinctive and customized online personas.
For instance, the.tech and.dev extensions highlight your presence in the technological industry, while the.store extension is perfect for e-commerce companies. You can further customize your domain to fit the particular emphasis and target audience of your business with other well-liked extensions like.llc for limited liability companies,.io for tech startups, and.studio for creative professions. These new gTLDs offer flexible choices to target particular groups and increase brand awareness.
Country-code top-level domain (ccTLD)
Country-code Top-level domains (ccTLDs) reveal the nation in which a business or organization is based or where a website is registered. For instance, the ccTLDs for the United States and Ireland are.us and.ie, respectively. Although the purpose of a ccTLD is to indicate the country of a domain name, certain ccTLDs, such as Tuvalu’s.tv and Anguilla’s.ai, are selected for their branding value (though some ccTLDs have restrictions on who can register them). Additionally, common extensions like.co.uk and.com.au can be created by combining gTLDs and ccTLDs.
Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs)
Website addresses in native languages and scripts are made possible by internationalized domain names, which permit the use of non-ASCII characters in domain names. For users who speak languages like Cyrillic, Arabic, Chinese, and others that utilize non-Latin fonts, this improves accessibility and inclusivity.
IDNs convert non-ASCII characters into a standardized format that the Domain Name System (DNS) can understand by using Punycode encoding. Through this conversion, domain names containing special characters are guaranteed to be usable and accessible throughout the worldwide internet infrastructure.