Why Do Websites End in .com ?
July 3, 2021
When we refer to the internet address or name, a domain or domain name
is the location of the website. Say for example, the domain name
“google.com” points to the IP address “216.58.216.164”.
Generally, it’s easier to remember a name rather than a long string of
numbers. Each computer on the internet has an Internet protocol (IP)
address.
Since remembering the IP addresses of all of your favourite websites
would be nearly impossible, a group of computer scientists created the
domain name system to assign a unique name to each numeric IP address.
A short, memorable domain name for a company helps in creating
successful web presence.
Let’s say we visit a company’s website and the site is published through
a free web hosting site, the website URL will look somewhat like,
www.wix.com/nameofyourbusiness.
This generic address might not leave the same impression as a URL like
www.yourbusiness.com will. Having our own domain name makes the company
look professional.
Free website hosting is good for a hobby project but for something more
serious, it is advisable to go with an affordable web hosting plan.
.com stands for commercial and it was first introduced together with
other top-level domain names such as .edu, .net, .gov, .mil, .org, .int.
It was initially intended to represent the commercial intent of the
website but nowadays there is no restriction on what kind of entity can
use this domain extension.
Even a non-profit organization can use .com tld(top-level domain). It
gained popularity because it was introduced so early on that it became
the go-to TLD because it was essentially the first out of the gate.
People started to come online in the early 90’s and by that time .com
had already been established as the standard for what a domain should
look like.
It is also been told that it can at times be damn near impossible to
find a .com domain that’s available. Sometimes people even snap up
domain names because they know other people are going to want them, with
no intention of doing anything other than waiting for the highest bidder
to come along.
Nowhere is it written that your start-up would fail if you don’t own
.com domain. Ask a layman about what does .com mean and we have a fair
chance to get the right answer.
Now ask the same person about any other domain name, it is possible that
they don’t even recognize what it means, it’s because they haven’t seen
or heard it before.
We can not say .com is better than all other tld names, it’s just very
common. They are globally recognized and because of its popularity, it
has become like a default domain when people go hunting of their dream
project.
This can be related with a real-life example, where we don’t
actually use the word ‘toothpaste’ while buying toothpaste. We generally
go to the shop and say, “bhaiya, ek colgate dena na!”
That being said, domain name is not the only thing that drives visitors
to our website. In fact, careful Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a
bigger driving effect than the domain name we choose. Website with .com
domains are more likely to be better for SEO, but that is because it has
been around fir so long, and there tends to be a search engine bias
toward it, but that doesn’t mean that other domains aren’t searchable.