What type of Domain Should I Use?

I often see variations of the same question on the discussion boards:

• What type of domain should I use?
• Should I use a .com or a .net domain?
• Is a domain with .net or .org better?

I’ve spent about 20 years of my career in telecommunications product development, management, and marketing with most of my focus in the area of data/broadband communications and the Internet.

Now, I’m not going to claim I invented the Internet (for those of you old enough to understand that reference), but I did spend the first 5 years of my career working in the Department of Defense on datacom/telecom R&D projects and I’ve had the opportunity to see a lot of evolution of the Internet over the years so I thought I’d provide some historical perspective to answer this question.

Types of Domains

In the early days of the Internet, 7 top-level domains were created and these domains were administered by the Department of Defense:

1. .com – This was intended for “commercial”, for-profit business entities.
2. .org – This was intended for non-profit “organization” entities
3. .net – This was intended for use by domains containing a distributed network of computers, or sites that act as a portal to smaller sites.
4. .int – This was intended to be used by organizations, offices, and programs endorsed by a treaty between two or more nations.
5. .edu – This was intended for use by educational facilities such as grade schools, high schools, universities, trade schools, etc. but later was restricted to post-secondary institutions accredited by the U.S. Department of Education.
6. .gov – This was intended for non-military, U.S. national and state government agencies.
7. .mil – This was intended for all agencies under the U.S. Department of Defense.

When the Department of Defense controlled domain registrations, the use of these domain types was enforced. However, as the popularity and usage of the Internet grew, it quickly went beyond the mission of the Department of Defense and an independent, non-profit organization (ICANN) was formed to manage domain registrations. And, what started out as the original set of U.S. domains, has had many new top-level domains have been created to provide domains for other countries and even defined for intended use... For example, you may have a .mobi domain which is intended for mobile devices.

Selecting a Domain

Of the original top-level domains, .int, .edu, .gov, and .mil are still enforced under the original intentions so you won’t see them the next time you buy a domain from GoDaddy, NameCheap, WA, or any other domain name registrar. However, there is no longer a strict enforcement of .com (which was always available for businesses), .org, and .net so you could easily register a name in any one of these for your next website.

Although earlier versions of search engine algorithms did at one time take some top-level domains into consideration for website ranking, it is no longer used in today’s algorithms. For example, since .edu or .gov links were more tightly controlled, if you had a topical link from an educational/government facility, search engines would give it more value than other links pointing to your website. So, choosing between .com, .org, and .net has no traffic impact.

Nowadays, as people are very well familiar with the term “.com”, so obtaining a name in the .com domain is probably a great choice. However, it’s also the most difficult domain in which to find a name as most people and companies are requesting this space.

If you can’t find a name that you like in the .com domain, don’t worry the .net domain is much less utilized and you can probably find a good name with less effort in this domain. And, as this domain is being used more often, more people are getting familiar with it.

The .org direct is also available to use. However, at this time, there are still many more non-profits organizations using this particular domain so, from my perspective, I think people still associate it to non-commercial usage though I’m sure that will eventually change just as the .net usage is now evolving.