{"id":825498,"date":"2018-05-03T12:00:33","date_gmt":"2018-05-03T12:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lafactory.com\/blog\/are-you-hurting-your-website-by-not-using-a-com-domain-2\/"},"modified":"2022-12-10T12:44:52","modified_gmt":"2022-12-10T12:44:52","slug":"are-you-hurting-your-website-by-not-using-a-com-domain-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lafactory.com\/blog\/are-you-hurting-your-website-by-not-using-a-com-domain\/","title":{"rendered":"Are You Hurting Your Website By Not Using a .com Domain?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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When it comes to domains,\u00a0.com\u00a0<\/em>is king. Most people will always opt to use\u00a0.com\u00a0<\/em>domains whenever they can. That brings up the question \u2013 can using\u00a0alternatives to\u00a0.com\u00a0<\/em>impact the way users see your website?<\/p>\n

From a technical standpoint, there\u2019s no difference between using a\u00a0.com\u00a0<\/em>domain or any other type. However, using an alternative can impact your site in other ways. In this article, we\u2019ll run through a brief history of domain names and talk about whether you should use a\u00a0.com\u00a0<\/em>URL. Then we\u2019ll introduce you to some other worthwhile alternatives.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take it from the top!<\/p>\n

A Brief History of Top-Level Domains<\/h2>\n
\"Several<\/p>\n

There are over 1,000 TLDs available and new ones are coming out all the time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Top Level Domains (TLDs) are the suffixes at the end of every URL.\u00a0.com\u00a0<\/em>is the most well-known TLD, but it\u2019s hardly the only one. In fact, there are over 1,000 TLD options<\/a>\u00a0available. Not all of them are available to the public, but that\u2019s still a lot of options.<\/p>\n

The name\u00a0.com\u00a0<\/em>comes from the word \u201ccommercial\u201d and the first domain name to use it was\u00a0symbiolics.com<\/em>, in 1985. Before TLDs, if you wanted to reach a website, you needed to connect to it through its IP address. Each server you connect to still has its own IP address you can reach, but that proved too unwieldy for everyday use. To tackle that problem, the Domain Name System (DNS)\u00a0launched in 1985.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s thanks to the DNS you can connect to your favorite websites using simple-to-remember names. More importantly, keeping a record of registered domains enables us to avoid duplicates. TLDs are an integral part of this system and back when they launched, options were more limited. Aside from\u00a0.com<\/em>, 1985 also saw the launch of multiple other TLDs, including staples such as\u00a0.org<\/em>,\u00a0.edu,<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0.net<\/em>. Over thirty years later, all those TLDs are still common the web.<\/p>\n

The organization that manages new TLDs and handles maintenance for key related databases is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)<\/a>. It was born in 1998, and although the rate of new TLDs was slow in its early days, it rose sharply in recent years. If you\u2019ve registered a domain lately, you\u2019ve probably noticed you have a\u00a0lot\u00a0<\/em>more TLD options than even a few years back. That isn\u2019t necessarily a bad thing, but the problem is, people still prefer good old\u00a0.com\u00a0<\/em>TLDs, which brings us to the next section.<\/p>\n

The Pros and Cons of Using a\u00a0.com\u00a0<\/em>Domain<\/h2>\n

As we mentioned earlier, there\u2019s no technical upside to using a\u00a0.com\u00a0<\/em>domain over any other alternative. For example, imagine you want to register a new domain called\u00a0puppiesarethebest<\/em>. Even if you go with\u00a0puppiesarethebest.com, puppiesarethebest.fun<\/em>, or even\u00a0puppiesarethebest.blog, <\/em>it won\u2019t affect your website\u2019s functionality in any way.<\/p>\n

However, we would be remiss if we didn\u2019t point out there are some real benefits to using\u00a0.com\u00a0<\/em>domains. Let\u2019s talk about what they are:<\/p>\n