A web domain is the name or physical address by which the browser locates a certain site within the internet. It is precisely the perfect way in which the search engine can differentiate the different domains and it is essentially composed of two important elements that may be missing.

On the one hand a name that identifies the domain and on the other the extension. For example, in the case of Google.com, the name of the website would be Google, while the extension for your search is .com. When you buy a certain domain you are specifying which server that domain is pointing to.

Domain registrations

It is essential that the domain names are registered, in fact it must be verified if they are available at the time of purchase. ICANN is the corporation in charge of supervising the registration of domains, also showing the extensions that are available through its extensive database, within which all that currently exist on the web are listed.

When you visit a website, you are basically using two elements:

The server , which is the physical machine where the files and databases of the entire vast online world are stored, is also the one that directs people through their Internet journey.

, which is the physical machine where the files and databases of the entire vast online world are stored, is also the one that directs people through their Internet journey. The web domain that will be the address that users write to get to your site within the internet platform.

How does a domain work?

The domain is practically a shortcut through which you will go directly to the server that contains your web page. This prevents you from having to remember the full IP address each time you need to log in.

For this there are hosting, web hosting services that include annual payment packages and thereby facilitate user access to your website.

Domain types

As we have indicated previously, the domain consists of a name and an extension, in the given example we mention the .com; but this formula is not the same for all cases, since you will find domains such as .org .net .es and many others.

The largest percentage of them is undoubtedly occupied by .com, one of the top-level domains identified as TLD, with thousands of sites, the .org also standing out; .edu or .net.

Also forming part of this higher level are the ccTLDs that are identified with the code of each country, in which case, for example, for Spain is used .es, while in the case of Japan it corresponds to .jp.

However, it is possible to additionally find the gTLD domain that represents a generic higher level directed to specific institutions such as educational ones, using for example .edu. You will also see .mi domains intended for military organizations or .gov, which correspond to government entities, in the same way as .net used by internet providers in many countries around the world.

All the categories that we have seen previously represent the most frequent in the online world but there is a type of second level domain. You can identify these when you see that the name is accompanied by extensions like .co.uk; those that are used instead of the typical .com; which is an example of one of these second-level domains that you must know how to identify, since they are part of internet networks.

As you can see, it is important to know what a domain is and how it operates within the web, since they are addresses that are registered and maintained by their buyers in order to provide a form of quick access to each of the contents that are published by them.

Each domain grows and becomes famous based on its prestige within the web and considering the content it offers to the user, since many of them can become fixed clients of this type of pages, which in the long run provides a series of economic benefits to the owner of this domain.