A country code top-level domain is an Internet top-level domain generally used or reserved for a country ....
s (ccTLDs). Below these top-level domains in the DNS hierarchy are the second-level and third-level domain names that are typically open for reservation by end-users that wish to connect local area networks to the Internet, run web sites, or create other publicly accessible Internet resources. The registration of these domain names is usually administered by domain name registrarA domain name registrar is an organization or commercial entity, accredited by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers or by a national country code top-level domain authority, to manage the reservation of Internet domain names in accordance with the guidelines of the designated...
s who sell their services to the public.
Individual Internet host computers use domain names as host identifiers, or hostnameA hostname is the unique name by which a network-attached device is known on a network...
s. Hostnames are the leaf labels in the domain name system usually without further subordinate domain name space. Hostnames appear as a component in Uniform Resource LocatorIn computing, a Uniform Resource Locator is a subset of the Uniform Resource Identifier that specifies where an identified resource is available and the mechanism for retrieving it. In popular usage and in many technical documents and verbal discussions it is often incorrectly used as a synonym...
s (URLs) for Internet resources such as web sites (e.g., en.wikipedia.org).
Domain names are also used as simple identification labels to indicate ownership or control of a resource. Such examples are the realm identifiers used in the Session Initiation ProtocolThe Session Initiation Protocol is a signaling protocol, widely used for controlling multimedia communication sessions such as voice and video calls over Internet Protocol . Other feasible application examples include video conferencing, streaming multimedia distribution, instant messaging,...
(SIP), the DomainKeysDomainKeys is an e-mail authentication system designed to verify the DNS domain of an e-mail sender and the message integrity. The DomainKeys specification has adopted aspects of Identified Internet Mail to create an enhanced protocol called DomainKeys Identified Mail...
used to verify DNS domains in e-mailElectronic mail, often abbreviated as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages, designed primarily for human use...
systems, and in many other Uniform Resource IdentifierIn computing, a Uniform Resource Identifier consists of a string of characters used to identify or name a resource on the Internet. Such identification enables interaction with representations of the resource over a network using specific protocols...
s (URIs).
An important purpose of domain names is to provide easily recognizable and memorizable names to numerically addressedAn Internet Protocol address is a numerical label that is assigned to devices participating in a computer network utilizing the Internet Protocol for communication between its nodes....
Internet resources. This abstraction allows any resource (e.g., website) to be moved to a different physical location in the address topology of the network, globally or locally in an intranetAn intranet is a private computer network that uses Internet Protocol technologies to securely share any part of an organization's information or operational systems within that organization. The term is used in contrast to internet, a network between organizations, and instead refers to a network...
. Such a move usually requires changing the IP address of a resource and the corresponding translation of this IP address to and from its domain name.
Domain names are often referred to simply as domains and domain name registrants are frequently referred to as domain owners, although domain name registration with a registrar does not confer any legal ownership of the domain name, only an exclusive right of use.
This article primarily discusses the group of domain names that are offered by domain name registrars for registration by the public. The Domain Name SystemThe Domain Name System is a hierarchical naming system for computers, services, or any resource connected to the Internet or a private network. It associates various information with domain names assigned to each of the participants...
article discusses the technical facilities and infrastructure of the domain name space and the hostnameA hostname is the unique name by which a network-attached device is known on a network...
article deals with specific information about the use of domain names as identifiers of network hosts.
Top-level domains
The top-level domainA top-level domain or domain name is the highest level of domain names in the root zone of the Domain Name System of the Internet. For all domains in lower levels, it is the last part of the domain name, that is, the label that follows the last dot of a fully qualified domain name...
s (TLDs) are the highest level of domain names of the Internet. They form the DNS root zoneA DNS root zone is the top-level DNS zone in a Domain Name System hierarchy. Most commonly it refers to the root zone of the largest global DNS system deployed for the Internet...
of the hierarchical Domain Name SystemThe Domain Name System is a hierarchical naming system for computers, services, or any resource connected to the Internet or a private network. It associates various information with domain names assigned to each of the participants...
. Every domain name ends in a top-level or first-level domain label.
When the Domain Name System was created in the 1980s, the domain name space was divided into two main groups of domains. The country code top-level domainborder="0" align="right" cellspacing="5" width="20%"> A country code top-level domain is an Internet top-level domain generally used or reserved for a country ....
s (ccTLD) were primarily based on the two-character territory codes of ISO-3166ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes are two-letter country codes defined in ISO 3166-1, part of the ISO 3166 standard published by the International Organization for Standardization , to represent countries, dependent territories, and special areas of geographical interest...
country abbreviations. In addition, a group of seven generic top-level domainA generic top-level domain is one of the categories of top-level domains maintained by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority for use in the Domain Name System of the Internet....
s (gTLD) was implemented which represented a set of categories of names and multi-organizations. These were the domains GOVgov is a sponsored top-level domain in the Domain Name System of the Internet. It is restricted for use by government entities in the United States. The gov domain is administered by the General Services Administration , an independent agency of the United States federal government...
, EDUedu is the sponsored top-level domain in the Domain Name System of the Internet for educational institutions, primarily those in the United States. Although not officially mandated for much of the domain's existence, in practice it has been used primarily for U.S.-based four-year...
, COMcom is a generic top-level domain within the Domain Name System of the Internet. It was one of the original top-level domains , the others being edu, gov, mil, net, org, and arpa established in January 1985...
, MILmil is the sponsored top-level domain in the Domain Name System of the Internet for the United States Department of Defense and its subsidiary or affiliated organizations. It was one of the first top-level domains, created in January 1985.The United States is the only country that has a top-level...
, ORGorg is a generic top-level domain of the Domain Name System used in the Internet. org is sometimes pronounced in word form as 'org', 'dot-org', or 'dot-oh-are-gee '. It is derived from the word organization....
, NETnet is a generic top-level domain used on the Internet's Domain Name System. The net gTLD is currently operated by VeriSign...
, and INTint is a sponsored top-level domain used in the Domain Name System of the Internet.According to current Internet Assigned Numbers Authority policy, the int sTLD is reserved for international treaty-based organizations, United Nations agencies and organizations or entities having...
.
During the growth of the Internet, it became desirable to create additional generic top-level domains. As of June 2009, there are 20 generic top-level domains and 248 country code top-level domains. In addition, the ARPAarpa is an Internet top-level domain used exclusively for Internet infrastructure purposes. The name is a backronym for Address and Routing Parameter Area....
domain serves technical purposes in the infrastructure of the Domain Name System.
During the 32nd International Public ICANN Meeting in Paris in 2008, ICANN started a new process of TLD naming policy to take a "significant step forward on the introduction of new generic top-level domains." This program envisions the availability of many new or already proposed domains, as well a new application and implementation process. Observers believed that the new rules could result in hundreds of new top-level domain to be registered.
An annotated list of top-level domains in the root zone database is published at the IANA website at http://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/ and a Wikipedia list exists.
Second-level and lower level domains
Below the top-level domains in the domain name hierarchy are the second-level domainIn the Domain Name System hierarchy, a second-level domain is a domain that is directly below a top-level domain . For example, in example.com, example is the second-level domain of the .com TLD....
(SLD) names. These are the names directly to the left of .com, .net, and the other top-level domains. As an example, in the domain en.wikipedia.org, wikipedia is the second-level domain.
Next are third-level domains, which are written immediately to the left of a second-level domain. There can be fourth- and fifth-level domains, and so on, with virtually no limitation. An example of an operational domain name with four levels of domain labels is www.sos.state.oh.us. The www preceding the domains is the host name of the World-Wide Web server. Each label is separated by a full stopA full stop or period is the punctuation mark commonly placed at the end of several different types of sentences in English and many other languages...
(dot). 'sos' is said to be a sub-domain of 'state.oh.us', and 'state' a sub-domain of 'oh.us', etc. In general, subdomainIn the Domain Name System hierarchy, a subdomain is a domain that is part of a larger domain.- Overview :The Domain Name System has a tree structure or hierarchy, with each node on the tree being a domain name. A subdomain is a domain that is part of a larger domain, the only domain that isn't...
s are domains subordinate to their parent domain. An example of very deep levels of subdomain ordering are the IPv6Internet Protocol version 6 is the next-generation Internet Protocol version designated as the successor to IPv4, the first implementation used in the Internet and still in dominant use ....
reverse resolution DNS zoneA DNS zone is a portion of the global Domain Name System namespace for which administrative responsibility has been delegated.- Definition :...
s, e.g., 1.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.ip6.arpa, which is the reverse DNS resolution domain name for the IP address of a loopbackThe term loopback is generally used to describe methods or procedures of routing electronic signals, digital data streams, or other flows of items, from their originating facility quickly back to the same source entity without intentional processing or modification...
interface, or the localhostIn computer networking, localhost is the standard hostname given to the address of the loopback network interface. The name is also a reserved domain name In computer networking, localhost (meaning "this computer") is the standard hostname given to the address of the loopback network interface....
name.
Second-level (or lower-level, depending on the established parent hierarchy) domain names are often created based on the name of a company (e.g., microsoft.com), product or service (e.g., gmail.com). Below these levels, the next domain name component has been used to designate a particular host server. Therefore, ftp.wikipedia.org might be an FTP server, www.wikipedia.org would be a World Wide Web server, and mail.wikipedia.org could be an email server, each intended to perform only the implied function. Modern technology allows multiple physical servers with either different (cf. load balancingIn computer networking, load balancing is a technique to distribute workload evenly across two or more computers, network links, CPUs, hard drives, or other resources, in order to get optimal resource utilization, maximize throughput, minimize response time, and avoid overload...
) or even identical addresses (cf. anycastAnycast is a network addressing and routing scheme whereby data is routed to the "nearest" or "best" destination as viewed by the routing topology.The term is intended to echo the terms unicast, broadcast and multicast....
) to serve a single hostname or domain name, or multiple domain names to be served by a single computer. The latter is very popular in Web hosting serviceA web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to make their own website accessible via the World Wide Web. Web hosts are companies that provide space on a server they own or lease for use by their clients as well as providing Internet...
centers, where service providers host the websites of many organizations on just a few servers.
Allowed character set
Domain name registrations have traditionally only been allowed for names that consist only of letters, digits and the hyphen (-) from the ASCIIThe American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text...
character set, as in hostnameA hostname is the unique name by which a network-attached device is known on a network...
s. The full stopA full stop or period is the punctuation mark commonly placed at the end of several different types of sentences in English and many other languages...
(dot, .) is used to separate DNS labels, the hierarchical components in a domain name.
This character set excludes numerous characters commonly found in non-English languages, and does not allow multi-byte characters necessary for most Asian languages. The Internationalized domain nameAn internationalized domain name is an Internet domain name that contains one or more non-ASCII characters. Such domain names could contain letters with diacritics, as required by many languages, or characters from non-Latin scripts such as Arabic, Chinese, Cyrillic, Devanagari or Hebrew...
(IDN) system, which permits such characters, has been developed and many registries allow such names.
The underscore character is permitted in names used in the domain name system, and is frequently used to ensure that a domain name is not recognized as a hostname, as in the use of DNS server records (SRV)An SRV record or Service record is a category of data in the Internet Domain Name System specifying information on available services. It is defined in RFC 2782...
, for example. Other naming systems often used in conjunction with DNS, such as NetBIOSNetBIOS is an acronym for Network Basic Input/Output System. It provides services related to the session layer of the OSI model allowing applications on separate computers to communicate over a local area network. As strictly an API, NetBIOS is not a networking protocol...
, allow it.
Official assignment
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has overall responsibility for managing the DNS. It administers the root domainA root name server is a name server for the Domain Name System's root zone. It directly answers requests for records in the root zone and answers other requests returning a list of the designated authoritative name servers for the appropriate top-level domain...
, delegating control over each TLD to a domain name registryA domain name registry, is a database of all domain names registered in a top-level domain. A registry operator, also called a Network Information Center , is the part of the Domain Name System of the Internet that keeps the database of domain names, and generates the zone files which convert...
. For ccTLDsborder="0" align="right" cellspacing="5" width="20%"> A country code top-level domain is an Internet top-level domain generally used or reserved for a country ....
, the domain registry is typically installed by the government of that country. ICANN has a consultation role in these domain registries but cannot regulate the terms and conditions of how domain names are delegated in each of the country-level domain registries. On the other hand, the generic top-level domainA generic top-level domain is one of the categories of top-level domains maintained by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority for use in the Domain Name System of the Internet....
s (gTLDs) are governed directly under ICANN, which means all terms and conditions are defined by ICANN with the cooperation of each gTLD registry.
Domain names are often seen in analogy to real estateReal estate is a legal term that encompasses land along with anything permanently affixed to the land, such as buildings, specifically property that is fixed in location. "Real estate" The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin...
in that (1) domain names are foundations on which a website (like a house or commercial building) can be built and (2) the highest "quality" domain names, like sought-after real estate, tend to carry significant value, usually due to their online brand-building potential, use in advertising, search engine optimizationSearch engine optimization is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" or un-paid search results as opposed to search engine marketing which deals with paid inclusion...
, and many other criteria.
A few companies have offered low-cost, below-cost or even cost-free domain registrations with a variety of models adopted to recoup the costs to the provider. These usually require that domains be hosted on their website within a framework or portal that includes advertising wrapped around the domain holder's content, revenue from which allows the provider to recoup the costs. Domain registrations were free of charge when the DNS was new. A domain holder (often referred to as a domain owner) can give away or sell infinite number of subdomainIn the Domain Name System hierarchy, a subdomain is a domain that is part of a larger domain.- Overview :The Domain Name System has a tree structure or hierarchy, with each node on the tree being a domain name. A subdomain is a domain that is part of a larger domain, the only domain that isn't...
s under their domain name. For example, the owner of example.edu could provide subdomains such as foo.example.edu and foo.bar.example.edu to interested parties.
Abuses
As domain names became interesting to marketers because of their advertising and marketing potential, rather than just being used to label Internet resources in a technical fashion, they began to be used in manners that in many cases did not reflect the intended purpose of the label of their top-level domain. As originally planned, the structure of domain names followed a hierarchy in which the TLD indicated the type of organization (commercial, governmental, etc.), and addresses would be nested down to third, fourth, or further levels to express complex structures, where, for instance, branches, departments and subsidiaries of a parent organization would have addresses in subdomains of the parent domain. Also, hostnames were originally intended to correspond to actual physical machines on the network, generally with only one name per machine.
As the World Wide Web became popular, site operators frequently wished to have memorable addresses, regardless of whether they fit properly into the structure; thus, because the .comcom is a generic top-level domain within the Domain Name System of the Internet. It was one of the original top-level domains , the others being edu, gov, mil, net, org, and arpa established in January 1985...
domain was the most popular and therefore most prestigious, even noncommercial sites began to obtain domains directly within that gTLD, and many sites desired second-level domain names in .com, even if they were already part of a larger entity where a subdomain would have been logical (e.g., abcnews.com instead of news.abc.com).
Shorter, and therefore more memorable, domain names are thought to have more appeal. As a convenience, methods were implemented to reduce the amount of typing required when entering a web site address into the location field of a web browser. A website found at http://www.example.org will often be advertised without the http://, since the HTTP protocol is implicitly assumed when referring to web sites. In many cases, web sites can be also be reached by omitting the www prefix, as in this given example. This feature is usually implemented in DNS by the website administrator. In the case of a .com, the website can sometimes be reached by just entering example (depending on browser versions and configuration settings, which vary in how they interpret incomplete addresses).
The popularity of domain names also led to uses which were regarded as abusive by established companies with trademark rights; this has become known as cybersquattingCybersquatting , according to the United States federal law known as the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, is registering, trafficking in, or using a domain name with bad faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else...
, in which a person registers a domain name that resembles a trademark in order to profit from visitors looking for that address. To combat this, various laws and policies were enacted to allow abusive registrations to be forcibly transferred, but these were sometimes themselves abused by overzealous companies committing reverse domain hijacking- Introduction :The term reverse domain hijacking refers to the practice of acquiring domain names from owners by accusing them of violating trademarks with the domain name, and demanding that the domain be transferred....
against domain users who had legitimate grounds to hold their names. Such legitimate uses could include the use of generic words that are contained within a trademark, but used in a particular context within the trademark, or their use in the context of fan or protest sites with free speech rights of their own.
Laws that specifically address domain name conflicts include the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection ActThe Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act , a United States federal law enacted in 1999, is part of A bill to amend the provisions of title 17, United States Code, and the Communications Act of 1934, relating to copyright licensing and carriage of broadcast signals by satellite...
in the United States and the Trademarks Act of 1999 in India. Alternatively, domain registrants are bound by contract under the UDRP to comply with mandatory arbitrationMandatory arbitration is a contract term that prevents a conflict from receiving judicial attention. In a mandatory arbitration, as mandated in the contract, liability for damages must be determined as a result of an arbitration process before a civil lawsuit can be filed in the court system...
proceedings should someone challenge their ownership of a domain name.
Often email phishingIn the field of computer security, phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication...
scams will abuse subdomain names to appear to be a legitimate site. For instance, an email might purport to be from Bank of America, and include a link to a fake login screen hosted on http://www.bankofamerica.com.abc.def.ghi.jkl In this case, the actual domain is ghi.jkl, but appears at first glance to be bankofamerica.com.
Generic domain names—problems arising from unregulated name selection
Within a particular TLD, parties are generally free to register an undelegated domain name on a first come, first servedFirst-come, first-served is a service policy whereby the requests of customers or clients are attended to in the order that they arrived, without other biases or preferences...
basis, resulting in Harris's lament, all the good ones are taken. For generic or commonly used names, this may sometimes lead to the use of a domain name which is inaccurate or misleading. This problem can be seen with regard to the ownership or control of domain names for a generic productGeneric brands of consumer products are distinguished by the absence of a brand name, although the term is actually improper usage of the word "generic", which actually means "relating to or descriptive of an entire group or class." Furthermore, it is often inaccurate to describe these products...
or service.
By way of illustration, there has been tremendous growth in the number and size of literary festivalA literary festival, also known as a book festival or writers' festival, is a regular gathering of writers and readers, typically on an annual basis in a particular city...
s around the world in recent years. In the current context, a generic domain name such as literary.org is available to the first literary festival organization that is able to obtain the registration, even if the festival in question is very young or obscure. Some critics argue that there is greater amenity in reserving such domain names for the use of, for example, a regional or umbrella grouping of festivals. Related issues may also arise in relation to noncommercial domain names.
Unconventional domain names
Due to the rarity of one-word dot-com domain names, many unconventional domain names, domain hackA domain hack is an unconventional domain name that combines domain levels, especially the top-level domain , to spell out the full "name" or title of the domain...
s, have been created. They make use of the top-level domain as an integral part of the Web site's title. Three popular domain hack Web sites are cr.yp.to, blo.gsblo.gs is a service based on RSS feed aggregation, primarily from blogs, which produces a simple list of the user's bookmarked sites, ordered according to recentness of update. It was acquired by Yahoo! in June 2005...
and del.icio.usDelicious is a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks. The site was founded by Joshua Schachter in 2003 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005. It has more than five million users and 150 million bookmarked URLs...
, which spell out "crypto", "blogA blog is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order...
s" and "delicious", respectively.
Unconventional domain names are also used to create unconventional email addresses. Non-working examples that spell 'James' are j@m.es and j@mes.com, which use the domain names m.es (of Spain's .es.es is the country code top-level domain for Spain. It is administered by the Network Information Center of Spain.Registrations are permitted at the second level or at the third level beneath various generic second level categories. Some qualifications and restrictions apply to third-level...
) and mes.com, respectively.
Premium domain names
In the business of marketing domain names, "premium" domain names are often valuable, and have particular characteristics that are used in the domain appraisalA domain name appraisal is an estimate about the potential sales price of a particular Internet domain name. Domain name appraisals are highly speculative. It is an estimate and an opinion, and can considerably vary depending upon the considered elements of the name and its extension. Traffic to...
process. For example, the names are short, memorable, may contain words that are regularly searched on search engines, and/or keywords that help the domain name gain a higher ranking on search engines. They may contain generic words, so the domain has more than one meaning.
Very short .com domains are valuable as their number is limited. Among the 26 single-letter second-level domainsSingle-letter second-level domains are domain names in which the second-level domain consists of only one letter, such as x.example. In 1993, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority explicitly reserved all single-letter and single-digit second-level domain names in the top-level domains...
, only 3 are currently registered (q.com, x.com, z.com) because the Internet Assigned Numbers AuthorityThe Internet Assigned Numbers Authority is the entity that oversees global IP address allocation, root zone management for the Domain Name System , media types, and other Internet Protocol related assignments...
reserved them in 1993. Those that were already registered were not recalled. Among the 676 .com two letter domain name 59 have been registered or purchased by global branded companies.
Resale of domain names
The business of resale of previously registered domain names is known as the domain aftermarketThe domain aftermarket is the secondary market for Internet domain names in which a party interested in acquiring a domain that is already registered bids or negotiates a price to effect the transfer of registration from the registered holder of that domain name.The professional pursuit of...
.
Various factors influence the perceived value or market value of a domain name. They include
1) the natural or "organic" traffic that can be attributed to web surfers typing in a domain name in their web browser as opposed to doing a search for the site through a search engine. 2) Branding Opportunity. The ability to have a term recognized and easily recalled as a brand for a company or entity. 3) Re-sale value. The ability to spot trends and predict the value of a name based on its length (short is preferred), clarity, and commercial use. The word "loan" is far more valuable than the word "sunshine".
Generic domain names have sprung up in the last decade. Certain domains, especially those related to business, gambling, pornography, and other commercially lucrative fields of digital world trade have become very much in demand to corporations and entrepreneurs due to their importance in attracting clients.
There are disputes about the high values of domain names claimed and the actual cash prices of many sales such as Business.com. Another high-priced domain name, sex.comThe Internet domain name sex.com is a web portal owned by Escom LLC. It was the focus of one of the most publicized legal actions about ownership of domain names...
, was stolen from its rightful owner by means of a forged transfer instruction via fax. During the height of the dot-com eraThe "dot-com bubble" was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1998–2001 during which stock markets in Western nations saw their equity value rise rapidly from growth in the more recent Internet sector and related fields...
, the domain was earning millions of dollars per month in advertising revenue from the large influx of visitors that arrived daily. The sex.com sale may have never been final as the domain is still with the previous owner. Also, that sale was not just a domain but an income stream, a web site, a domain name with customers and advertisers, etc. Two long-running U.S. lawsuits resulted, one against the thief and one against the domain registrar VeriSignVeriSign, Inc. is an American company based in Mountain View, California that operates a diverse array of network infrastructure, including two of the Internet's thirteen root nameservers, the generic top-level domains for .com and .net, one of the largest SS7 signaling networks in North America,...
. In one of the cases, Kremen v. Network SolutionsNetwork Solutions, LLC is a technology company founded in 1979. The domain name registration business has become the most important division of the company. As of January 2009, Network Solutions managed more than 6.6 million domain names...
, the court found in favor of the plaintiff, leading to an unprecedented ruling that classified domain names as property, granting them the same legal protections. In 1999, Microsoft traded the name Bob.com with internet entrepreneur Bob Kerstein for the name Windows2000.com which was the name of their new operating system.
One of the reasons for the value of domain names is that even without advertising or marketing, they attract clients seeking services and products who simply type in the generic name. This is known as Direct NavigationDirect navigation describes the method individuals use to navigate the World Wide Web in order to arrive at specific websites. Direct navigation is a 10 year old term which is generally understood to include type-in traffic....
or Type-in TrafficType-in traffic is a term describing visitors landing at a web site by entering a keyword or phrase in the web browser's address bar Type-in traffic is a term describing visitors landing at a web site by entering a keyword or phrase (with no spaces or a hyphen in place of a space) in the web...
. Furthermore, generic domain names such as movies.com (now owned by Disney) or Books.com (now owned by Barnes & NobleBarnes & Noble, Inc. is the largest book retailer in the United States, operating mainly through its Barnes & Noble Booksellers chain of bookstores headquartered in lower Fifth Avenue in Manhattan...
) are extremely easy for potential customers to remember, increasing the probability that they become repeat customers or regular clients. In the case of Movies.com, Disney has built a stand-alone portal featuring branded content. More and more large brands are beginning to employ a more comprehensive domain strategy featuring a portfolio of thousands of domains, rather than just one or two.
Although the current domain market is nowhere as strong as it was during the dot-com heyday, it remains strong and is currently experiencing solid growth again. Annually tens of millions of dollars change hands in connection with the resale of domains. Large numbers of registered domain names lapse and are deleted each year. On average, more than 25,000 domain names drop (are deleted) every day.
An estimate by an appraiser is always the addition of what they would like a domain to be worth together with the effective/expected/desired revenue from the web content. Some people put value on the length of the SLD (name) and other people prefer description capability, but the shorter an SLD is, the less descriptive it can be. Also, if short is crucial, then the TLD (extension) should be short too. It is less realistic to get a domain like LL.travel or LL.mobi than a domain travel. LL or mobi. LL. This illustrates the relativity of domain value estimation. It is safe to say that the revenue of web (content) can be easily stated, but that the value of a domain (SLD.TLD aka name.ext) is a matter of opinion and preference. In the end, however, any sale depends on the expectations of the domain seller and the domain buyer.
A webmasterA webmaster , also called a web architect, web developer, site author, website administrator, or webmeister, is a person responsible for maintaining a website...
creating a new web site either buys the domain name directly from a domain name registrarA domain name registrar is an organization or commercial entity, accredited by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers or by a national country code top-level domain authority, to manage the reservation of Internet domain names in accordance with the guidelines of the designated...
, or indirectly from a domain name registrarA domain name registrar is an organization or commercial entity, accredited by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers or by a national country code top-level domain authority, to manage the reservation of Internet domain names in accordance with the guidelines of the designated...
through a domainer. People who buy and sell domain names are known as domainers. People who sell value estimation services are known as appraiserA domain name appraisal is an estimate about the potential sales price of a particular Internet domain name. Domain name appraisals are highly speculative. It is an estimate and an opinion, and can considerably vary depending upon the considered elements of the name and its extension. Traffic to...
s.
Domain aftermarket prices and trends
Domain name sales occurring in the aftermarket are frequently submitted to the DN journal. The sales are listed weekly and include the top aftermarket resellers which include but are not limited to Sedo, Traffic (auctions), Afternic, NameJet, Moniker and private sales.
To date, and according to Guinness World RecordsGuinness World Records, known until 2000 as The Guinness Book of Records , is a reference book published annually, containing an internationally recognised...
and MSNBCMSNBC is a cable news channel based in the United States and available in both the US and Canada. Its name is a combination of "MSN" and "NBC"....
, the most expensive domain name sales on record as of 2004 were:
- Business.com for $7.5 million in December 1999
- AsSeenOnTv.com for $5.1 million in January 2000
- Altavista.com for $3.3 million in August 1998
- Wine.com for $2.9 million in September 1999
- CreditCards.com for $2.75 million in July 2004
- Autos.com for $2.2 million in December 1999
The week ending January 27, 2008, DNJournal reported that CNNCable News Network, almost always referred to by its initialism CNN, is an U.S. cable news network founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first network to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television network in the United States...
, a cable news channel purchased iReport.com for $750,000. The high price for iReport.com, as in "I Report," was because it was branded by CNN as CNN's news crowdsourcing prior to the purchase of the domain name. Likewise, AltaVista was branded as a search engine prior to the high purchase price of the domain name.
Popular domain prefixes - "E" and "I"
In addition to a domain placing value on the shortness of the word, ease in spelling, commercial appeal, and organic capacity to generate natural traffic, today's domain names are being valued for the branding potential. The domain name sale iReport although not an organic or dictionary term alone, is actually preferred as a highly brandable term, in that it is has a popular pre-fix "i" which indicates the "report" to be online.
The prefixes and dashes between words were once considered second, but now due to brandability, if the term is a commercial term, a prefix is often preferred. Example eLoans markets with an e to indicate to its potential customers that a loan may be obtained online.
The two primary prefixes are "E", for electronic, and "I", for Internet. Both indicate the word or phrase to be accessible online. Because of that, in terms of branding, an i or e combined with a commercial term are highly desirable. In domain sales typically an e has been preferred, and i slightly less in terms of demand. eBrooklyn sold for approximately $2500 whereas once it would have been available to register at the price of a domain name (which ranges from $8 to $30 us dollars depending on the registrar). The rapidly increasing use of prefixes in conjunction with main dictionary and or commercial terms is here and for some predominantly internet based companies, or high technology, high profile companies, the prefix is now preferred.
One of the details that make a domain with a prefix more valuable for a brand, is the ability to simply promote the name without the use of ".com" in the promotion. If a domain owner had report.com he would be forced to use the .com to indicate it was on the net at that address, however a domain name with a one letter prefix does not need to use the ".com".
Someone could promote "iReport" as a brand, and assuming it was a world class brand, visitors would know they could find it at "iReport.com without seeing the .com. However if it was a .net, it would be wise to state iReport.net. This option to simply state the name of the company or entity is particularly valuable in that it is brief and clear in indicating that a report can be either made or found on the "i"nternet.
eLoans similarly does not have to state "eLoans.com". eLoans, in the minds of most is clearly an online entity offering electronic loan applications.
Some alternative domains that avoid the use of ".com" in their promotion are "WebMD" as the word web as a prefix suffice to indicate the information is online and likely at a .com extension.
Branding with a domain name
BrandA brand is a name or trademark connected with a product or producer. Brands have become increasingly important components of culture and the economy, now being described as "cultural accessories and personal philosophies".-Concepts:...
s are greatly affected by the ability of the company to obtain the matching domain name. If a company builds a brand around a name to which it does not own the domain name, it can end up directing traffic to another domain owner's site. If it is a competitor, this would be a problem.
Today's advertising development of a great brand is strictly confined to the availability to synchronize the brand with a domain name. Any confusion might result in a competitor gaining valuable internet traffic and possible customers.
Domain name confusion
Intercapping is often used to emphasize the meaning of a domain name. However, DNS names are case-insensitive, and some names may be misinterpreted in certain uses of capitalization. For example: Who Represents, a database of artists and agents, chose whorepresents.com, which can be misread as whore presents. Similarly, a therapists' network is named therapistfinder.com. Another example is powergenitalia.com, the website of an Italian power generator company. In such situations, the proper meaning may be clarified by use of hyphens in the domain name. For instance, Experts ExchangeExperts-Exchange.com is an online "ask an expert" site for computer and IT related questions that was founded in 1996. It offers multiple ways to access content on the site: earning membership by answering a few questions or writing a couple articles a month, or a fee-based premium service.At...
, the programmers' site, for a long time used expertsexchange.com, but ultimately changed the name to experts-exchange.com.
Leo StollerLeo D. Stoller is an American self-styled "intellectual property entrepreneur" based in suburban Chicago, Illinois. Stoller controversially claimed rights to a large inventory of "famous" trademarks and engaged in the assertive enforcement of those alleged trademark rights, threatening...
threatened to sue the owners of StealThisEmail.com on the basis that, when read as stealthisemail.com, it infringed on claimed (but invalid) trademark rights to the word "stealth".
Use in web site hosting
A domain name is a component of a Uniform Resource LocatorIn computing, a Uniform Resource Locator is a subset of the Uniform Resource Identifier that specifies where an identified resource is available and the mechanism for retrieving it. In popular usage and in many technical documents and verbal discussions it is often incorrectly used as a synonym...
(URL) used to access web sites, for example:
- URL: http://www.example.net/index.html
- Domain name: www.example.net
- Second-level domain name: example.net
A domain name may point to multiple IP addresses to provide server redundancy for the services delivered. This is used for large, popular web sites. More commonly, however, one server at a given IP address may also host multiple web sites in different domains. Such address overloading is possible through a feature in the HTTP version 1.1 protocol (but not in HTTP 1.0) which requires that a request identifies the domain name being referenced. This enables virtual web hostingVirtual hosting is a method that servers such as web servers use to host more than one domain name on the same computer, sometimes on the same IP address....
commonly used by large web hosting serviceA web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to make their own website accessible via the World Wide Web. Web hosts are companies that provide space on a server they own or lease for use by their clients as well as providing Internet...
s to conserve IP address space.
For example, the web server at IP address 208.77.188.166 handles all HTTP page requests to the following domain names:
- example.com
- www.example.com
- example.net
- www.example.net
- example.org
- www.example.org
External links
- IANA generic TLD
- IANA Two letter Country Code TLD
- ICANN - Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.
- Internic.net, public information regarding Internet domain name registration services.
- RFC 1034, Domain Names — Concepts and Facilities, an Internet Protocol Standard.
- RFC 1035, Domain Names — Implementation and Specification, an Internet Protocol Standard.
- UDRP, Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy.
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