Top level domains come in many variations. Extensions are often designated for their intended uses. The domain extensions were originally assigned in 1985 but more recent ones have emerged for use by different entities, companies or individuals. The most commonly used generic domain extensions are:

.COM – This domain extension is for commercial or general commercial character uses.

.NET – This is an extension designed for use by groups with networking technologies.

.ORG – The Organization extension is for non-profit or non-commercial character sites.

.INFO – Stands for information or informative Internet resources.

.BIZ – Restricted extension designed for business use, non-personal websites.

.NAME – Restricted extension for people who want to register real names, screen names or nicknames.

.PRO – Restricted extension intended for use by qualified professionals.

Special Use Top Level Domains

The special top level domains are only available to certain organizations which can make use of the domains to the fullest. They are often only available if your organization if you qualify for the use of the domain.

.GOV – Special use domain for government entities is only permitted. This is primarily used by the US.

.MIL – Special use domain for Military websites which are designed to recruit or scout for individuals.

.EDU – This is a special use domain for schools and other educational institutions.

.MUSEUM – Designed for use by Museums around the world.

Country Top Level Domain Extensions

Nearly every country has been assigned its own top level domain code extension. Many are very easy to recognize their country of origin while others require some understanding of why the grouping of letters was chosen. The following are easy to remember top level domains that are country specific:

.US – This domain extension is designed for use by United States websites.

.MX – Mexico has claimed this domain extension for their websites.

.UK – The United Kingdom uses the UK extension for their websites.

.DE – Germany makes great use of the DE (Deutschland) extension.

.FR – France is as easy as ever to spot with this domain extension.

Sponsored Top Level Domain Extensions

The use of sponsored top level domain extensions is not uncommon but it is also not as universally price effective. These sponsored top level domains are meant for business or other money making matters. They are difficult to find free to register because many companies take the available names which can be associated with their services.

.MOBI – This is an extension which is designed for use with mobile phones and other enabled portable Internet devices.

.TRAVEL – Basically, this is for travel agencies and anything related to travel. Not as useful as other easily remembered extensions.

.COOP – For cooperating companies, services or organizations.

Other Top Level Domains

There are domain names which are not generally used by the public and are allowed for placeholders. These domains get large amounts of traffic even though they use Unicode characters in their address bar. They usually made with normal extensions and can be visited if you know the code to type in for the character’s address. They can even use foreign characters in the domain extension which makes them unique but hard to reach sites by foreigners.