Web Address Extensions

Whenever you decide to build your own website, first you will need to register a domain name.  This domain name, which is the address of your website, will need to have a web address extension.  Often, you will be able to choose the one you want, but sometimes, the preferred extension will be taken, and you will have to come up with another one.

The Importance Of Web Address Extensions

Web address extensions are important for several reasons.  If you’ve ever driven around a neighborhood looking for a street name and you came across the same street, but with different extensions like road, drive, or place, you may have been frustrated.  Until you drove down the street with the proper extension, you wouldn’t have found the house or place of business you were looking for.  Web address extensions work in much the same way.  You may have the domain name right, but without including the proper extension, you’ll never find the website you’re looking for.

In the same way, you want to ensure that your customers and readers find your website.  While individuals that find your website through a search engine will find it regardless of the extension, you also want to create a website that is memorable, so it will be easy to find when customers want to return.  If your customer types in the wrong extension, you could lose business to the competition. You can read a good article about choosing your domain name at http://www.web-source.net/domain_name.htm.

Popular Web Address Extensions

Overall, the most popular web address extensions are .com, .net, and .org, with .com being the overall favorite.  While some people may think that the .org extension is for organizations or non-profits only, this isn’t true.  Anyone can register a .org extension.  Often, when people decide on the domain name they want and if it is not available in the .com extension, they will go ahead with the same domain name in the .net or.org extension.  However, sometimes, an individual will just alter their domain name until it is available on the .com extension.

Other Web Address Extensions

There are various other web address extensions, though not as popular as the ones already mentioned. Some of these include .info, .biz, and .tv. While many of these web address extensions are registered every day, the overall consensus seems to be that these domain extensions are not as lucrative to Internet marketers as the top level domain name extensions are.  There are also specific web address extensions for countries, such as .ca for Canada and .uk for the United Kingdom.

Restricted Web Address Extensions

While most web address extensions are not regulated, some of them are.  For example, the .gov extension is limited to government sites, and you won’t be able to register a domain with the .gov extension.  Restrictions like these are actually good, for the most part, because when we do research and want information from a government site, we can be assured that we are actually on a government site.  The same is true for websites ending in the .edu extension, which is reserved for educational institutions.  While the .org website may have originally been intended for organizations, since there is no regulation covering that extension, anyone can use it.  Of course, that means that when you are doing research, you may end up on a commercial site with the .org extension.  On the other hand, it also means that you can register a domain with that extension.

Choosing Web Address Extensions

It can be both fun and difficult to choose just the right web address extensions for your websites.  Most people create the domain name and look to see if it is available in the .com extension. If it is not, they may move on to the increasingly popular .net or .org extensions.  There are, however, other ways to get the extension you want when your first choice is already taken.  Some people will hyphenate the first part of their web address, or they will add a word to the beginning or ending of their domain name just before the extension.  For example, if www.dogtreats.com is already taken, you might try www.dog-treats.com or www.bestdogtreats.com.  On the other hand, if your domain name is something you are passionate about and do not want to change the wording, most people are perfectly comfortable with the .net and .org extensions.

Conclusion

To some people, web address extensions are as important as the domain name itself; to others, it is not as significant as long as they can have the domain name of their choice.  It really depends on how you plan to market your websites as to how much importance you attach to the extension.  If your customers or readers will be finding your websites strictly through the search engines, then the extension may not be as important.  Keep in mind, however, that when you tell people the address of your website, they may forget all about the extension and just type .com into their browser.  Most of us are programmed to think every website ends in .com, and we have to really think about it to type in another extension.

Some people buy several different extensions of the same web address at the time they register their domain. This may be to ensure they won’t have competition for the same domain name, or it could be for other reasons.  One good place to view all the possible web address extensions you could choose is a domain registrar, such as http://www.godaddy.com.  Here, you can quickly see which extensions are available for your chosen domain name, and even if you don’t want to register a domain right now, it is fun to look at the possibilities.  It is a good idea to spend some time thinking about just the right domain and the right web address extensions you plan to use before you register them. You might also want to conduct some research to see which extensions your competition may be using.