List of generic TLDs

There’s a lot of business happening in the .com namespace and it’s only natural since this particular domain name suffix is the most popular, on Earth.

The .com domain name suffix is one in a short list of generic top-level domains which are intended for particular classes of organizations. These gTLDs are three (3) or more letters long and are named to identify the type of organizations they represent.

The IANA confirms that the following gTLDs currently exist:

• .aero – for the air transport industry;
• .biz – for business use;
• .cat – for Catalan language and culture;
• .com – for commercial organizations but unrestricted;
• .coop – for cooperatives;
• .edu – for post-secondary educational establishments;
• .gov – for governments and their agencies in the United States;
• .info – for informational sites but unrestricted;
• .int – for international organizations established by treaty;
• .jobs – for employment-related sites;
• .mil – for the US military;
• .mobi – for sites catering to mobile devices;
• .museum – for museums;
• .name – for families and individuals;
• .net – originally for network infrastructures but now unrestricted;
• .org – originally for organizations not clearly falling within the other gTLDs but now unrestricted;
• .pro – for certain professions;
• .tel – for services involving connections between the telephone network and the Internet (added March 2nd, 2007);
• .travel – for travel agents, airlines, hoteliers, tourism bureaus, etc.

The .arpa suffix is sometimes considered to be a gTLD, it depends on who you ask.

The following gTLDs are in the process of being approved and may be added to the root nameservers in the near future:

• .asia – for the Asian community;
• .post – for postal services;
• .geo – for geographically related sites.

As you can see, .com is just one of the domain names, albeit a dominant one, that you can promote your organization with. Major companies nowadays own almost every “dot” for their names because so many people tend to naturally type them in.

Experts argue that adding too many domain name suffixes in this coveted gTLD list will dilute the tremendous power of .com and balkanize organizations switching to .museum, for instance.

To this day, however, most organizations that own and operate a lesser known gTLD domain name usually have their own .com, mainly as a precautionary meaure because that’s what visitors tend to use the most.

Tags: gtld, generic domains, domain names, web, .com, dot com