A Brief Guide to Domain Names
Thinking of buying a domain name? Perhaps you’ve already acquired one or two for your business? Either way, you may not completely understand the nuances between them— it can be quite a dry topic! In light of major changes in the domain name industry, there is no better time to get up to speed.
This article lays out the following key considerations:
- The UK domain — .co.uk or .uk?
- The new gTLDs
- .co — An alternative to .co.uk or .com?
Before we expand on these, it may be useful to briefly explain the main features about domains—You can always scroll past to the first consideration if you're already clued up!
What is a domain name?
A domain name is a human-readable web address. It’s often what you see in the URL bar of your internet browser. It points to a corresponding IP address.
What is an IP address?
All devices connected to the internet have a public IP address which is a string of numbers e.g. 192.198.68.4
Wondering what the IP address is for the device you're reading this article on? Type into Google: whats my ip?
Devices connected to the network use these numbers to communicate with each other —a bit like with telephone numbers— except the IP address is a lot more powerful and lets you send a lot more data over the network.
What is this ‘TLD’ and other shorthand I keep on seeing?
TLD is short for ‘Top-Level Domain’. You’re probably already familiar with it even if you didn’t know the name for it. It’s simply the letters that follow the last dot of a domain name — the domain ending.
There are several categories/groupings of TLDs, all serving the same purpose. For this article, you only really need to be familiar with these main two:
- ccTLD — Country code top-level domains
- gTLD — Generic top-level domains
Structure of domains
One feature of domains to bear in mind is that they have a hierarchal structure. Once you own a domain name, you have authority for all domains underneath it— with the power to set up ‘subdomains’. Taking Studio44 as an example, we have endless opportunities to create websites on any domain underneath larrytech.com, e.g. weare.larrytech.com
This seemingly unimportant feature can prove to be a useful marketing tool, as we have explained in our article on microsites. It essentially gives you a chance to experiment with ideas and promotional offers, without interfering or changing how your business/brand looks on your main domain.
It’s also important to note that websites sitting on a subdomain are seen as completely separate entities from Google’s search engine perspective. This is why we often recommend setting up a blog as an additional page to a domain e.g. larrytech.com/blog as opposed to blog.larrytech.com. It’s not a hard and fast rule, but it makes sense for the majority of businesses; who generally blog as a means of improving their website whilst hoping for improvements in their search engine performance.
1. The UK domain — .co.uk or .uk?
Not long ago the only way to have a domain name registered in the UK was at a ‘second-level’, with endings such as .co.uk, .gov.uk, .org.uk, to name a few. We (the UK) were one of the exceptions to the rule where other countries have their own ‘top level’ domain. A few examples include; Germany (.de), France (.fr), Spain (.es) and so on. If you’re interested, here is a complete list of country coded top-level domains (ccTLDs)
In June last year, things changed when Nominet (the non-profit organisation that oversees UK domain registries) allowed registration for .uk domain names (without the .co) which had previously been prohibited. See here for more detail: www.dotuklaunch.uk
It’s certainly a key shift to be aware of when it comes to registering domains in the UK, though hold your horses; you don’t need to rush out and purchase the .uk variant to your .co.uk domain name anytime soon, since there is a 5 year reservation period before they are available for anyone else to snap up.
e.g. Studio44 has purchased larrytech.co.uk, so we have first refusal to purchase larrytech.uk up until roughly June 2019
This rule doesn’t stand if a .co.uk domain was registered after June 2014, or if someone failed to renew/ownership was dropped for whatever reason after that date.
The bottom line is that you don’t need to worry about the new .uk domain ending anytime soon — In 2019 we may write another article to remind you to register for it!
2. The new gTLDs
The winds of change in the domain name industry will pick up even more speed over the course of 2015, with hundreds of new domain endings gradually being released onto the market. The slightly patronising video below does a good job of explaining how the internet is changing.
Why has this happened?
The traditional TLDs —e.g. .com & .co.uk— are all running out due to a combination of natural causes and ‘domain squatters’ buying name variations in the hope that they can sell them on for a pretty profit. Opening up new domain endings essentially gives individuals and businesses more options to secure a clean domain variant relevant to them.
Some people have cynically asserted that this is simply a money making exercise for ICANN and domain registrars, and that .com will always be king — time will tell!
To illustrate the problem and the chosen solution, you could draw parallels between Britain’s housing shortage and the Internet’s domain shortage...
People want houses just like people want a domain to build a website for their business/brand/organisation. How do you solve the housing market problem in Britain?
Well, you could cut back on planning laws e.g. allowing people to build on the green belt.
Think of the arrival of the new gTLDs as the ‘internet planning laws’ effectively being cut back, allowing people to build houses (websites), pretty much wherever they want.
What to be wary of…
This potentially throws a spanner into the works for businesses who have already have a domain name, perhaps a .com or .co.uk, but may want to make moves to protect their brand by securing variations similar to their existing domain.
e.g. An imaginary business ‘King Hotels Ltd.’ may already own the domain name — kinghotels.com
With .hotels being one out of the thousands of new gTLDs, they may now consider purchasing — king.hotels
There are also some technical issues that will come hand in hand with the new gTLDs, with it being thought to take over 10 years to completely iron out. One of the main sticking points is with email, where people and applications do not consider them to be legitimate addresses, leading to emails not arriving to their destined locations.
ICANN consider it to be a rather large stumbling block to its success, and have tasked to resolve it in their ‘Universal Acceptance’ programme. In here, they outline the fairly complex problem —
“Users are experiencing "bugs" when trying to use many TLDs in their browsers, email and other applications. This contributes to a "chicken-or-the-egg" problem. Users don't exhibit enough interest to get bugs fixed because the bugs prevent users from becoming interested, and vice versa. As a result, this is not just a "bug" for users, it is a "bug" for all working to expand the Internet.”
3. .co — An alternative to .co.uk or .com?
If you didn’t already know, .co is the ccTLD for Columbia. It has been unofficially touted as an alternative for business's whose desired .com or .co.uk name is not available for whatever reason. This is because, on the face of it, it seems to be a further abbreviation of ‘company’ or ‘commercial’ which .com denotes.
Problem: "Excuse me, is that .co.uk or .com?"
Your average internet user may not be familiar with different domain endings other than .com or .co.uk. This is especially the case with what has been touted as the next best domain ending to go with if .com or .co.uk are taken — .co. This can result in lost traffic from people who type in your URL directly rather than through a search engine such as Google, since they may type an extra ‘m’ or ‘uk’ onto the end of your actual domain name, leading them to a completely different website.
Confusion should not happen when clicking a highlighted link directly to a website, because users will arrive to the intended location, however in a similar fashion to the gTLDs, a few issues may arise when it comes to the sending and receiving of emails.
For people who have not come across the .co domain ending before, when sending an email to that address, they may feel a little perplexed. From years of familiarity with .com and .co.uk, they may feel like something is missing when they type in .co, with a main concern being — “Is my message going to arrive?!”
In some cases it can be rightful concern, with it being known that some email filters block unusual domain endings.
Over the coming years, familiarity with unusual domain endings will grow amongst users. Until that day comes, if you are a business that heavily relies on email communication, it would be wise to think twice about setting up shop on a .co domain name.
One more thing – Getting creative with ccTLDs
At the start of this post, I mentioned about needing to be familiar with country-coded domain endings. These could prove to be useful for those who find themselves in the unlikely situation of having their desired domain name unavailable through all the conventional domain endings, and also if the new gTLDs happen to not suit either.
It revolves around a term that has been popularised as a ‘Domain Hack’. Don’t worry, it doesn’t pose any security threat to you! Have a play about with this tool — www.domainhack.me
“A domainhack is an unconventional domain name that combines domain levels, especially the Top-Level Domain (TLD), to spell out the full 'name' or title of the domain”
To use Studio44 as an example again, if we were interested, we could use the .ch domain ending from Switzerland, to make a shorter domain for our brand.
We hope you have found some useful takeaways in this article, if you want to discuss domain names in greater detail why not send us a tweet? — @larrytechuk
