A domain name is an identification label to define a realm of administrative autonomy, authority, or control in the Internet The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standardized Internet Protocol Suite . It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private and public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope that are linked by copper wires, fiber-optic cables, wireless connections, and, based on the Domain Name System The Domain Name System is a hierarchical naming system for computers, services, or any resource participating in the Internet. It associates various information with the domain names assigned to each of the participants. Most importantly, it translates domain names meaningful to humans into the numerical (binary) identifiers associated with (DNS).

Domain names are used in various networking contexts and application-specific naming and addressing purposes. Domain names are organized in subordinate levels (subdomains) of the top-level Internet domains A top-level domain or domain name is the highest level of domain names in the root zone of the Domain Name System of the Internet. For all domains in lower levels, it is the last part of the domain name, that is, the label that follows the last dot of a fully qualified domain name. For example, in the domain name www.example.com, the top-level (TLDs), such as the prominent domains com .com is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) used on the Internet's Domain Name System. It was one of the original top-level domains (TLDs, the other five being .edu, .gov, .mil, .net and .org) established in January 1985, and has grown to be the largest TLD in use. It was originally administered by the United States Department of Defense. The DoD, net net is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) used on the Internet's Domain Name System. The net gTLD is currently operated by VeriSign. Registrations are processed via accredited registrars and internationalized domain names are also accepted (see details) and org org is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) used in the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS). In the typical style of most gTLDs, org is sometimes pronounced in word form as 'org', 'dot-org', or 'dot-oh-are-gee (O R G)' when spoken, although not all users of the TLD agree on this usage. Below the top-level domains in the DNS hierarchy are the second-level and third-level domain names that are typically open for reservation by end-users that wish to connect local area networks to the Internet, run web sites, or create other publicly accessible Internet resources. The registration of these domain names is usually administered by domain name registrars A domain name registrar is a an organization or commercial entity, accredited by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers or by a national country code top-level domain (ccTLD) authority, to manage the reservation of Internet domain names in accordance with the guidelines of the designated domain name registries and offer such who sell their services to the public.

Individual Internet host computers use domain names as host identifiers, or hostnames A hostname is the unique name by which a network-attached device is known on a network. The hostname is used to identify a particular host in various forms of electronic communication such as the World Wide Web, e-mail or Usenet. Hostnames are the leaf labels in the domain name system usually without further subordinate domain name space. Hostnames appear as a component in Uniform Resource Locators In computing, a Uniform Resource Locator is a type of Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) that specifies where an identified resource is available and the mechanism for retrieving it. In popular usage and in many technical documents and verbal discussions it is often incorrectly used as a synonym for URI. In popular language, a URL is also referred (URLs) for Internet resources such as web sites A website is a collection of related web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that are addressed with a common domain name or IP address in an Internet Protocol-based network. A web site is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via the Internet or a private local area network (e.g., en.wikipedia.org).

Domain names are also used as simple identification labels to indicate ownership or control of a resource. Such examples are the realm identifiers used in the Session Initiation Protocol The Session Initiation Protocol is a signalling protocol, widely used for setting up and tearing down multimedia communication sessions such as voice and video calls over Internet Protocol (IP). Other feasible application examples include video conferencing, streaming multimedia distribution, instant messaging, presence information and online (SIP), the DomainKeys DomainKeys is an e-mail authentication system designed to verify the DNS domain of an e-mail sender and the message integrity. The DomainKeys specification has adopted aspects of Identified Internet Mail to create an enhanced protocol called DomainKeys Identified Mail . This merged specification became the basis for an IETF Working Group which used to verify DNS domains in e-mail Electronic mail, often abbreviated as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages, designed primarily for human use. E-mail systems are based on a store-and-forward model in which e-mail computer server systems accept, forward, deliver and store messages on behalf of users, who only need to connect to the e-mail infrastructure, systems, and in many other Uniform Resource Identifiers In computing, a Uniform Resource Identifier consists of a string of characters used to identify or name a resource on the Internet. Such identification enables interaction with representations of the resource over a network (typically the World Wide Web) using specific protocols. Schemes specifying a specific syntax and associated protocols define (URIs).

An important purpose of domain names is to provide easily recognizable and memorizable names to numerically addressed An Internet Protocol address is a numerical identification and logical address that is assigned to devices participating in a computer network utilizing the Internet Protocol for communication between its nodes. Although IP addresses are stored as binary numbers, they are usually displayed in human-readable notations, such as 208.77.188.166 (for Internet resources. This abstraction allows any resource (e.g., website) to be moved to a different physical location in the address topology of the network, globally or locally in an intranet An intranet is a private computer network that uses Internet technologies to securely share any part of an organization's information or operational systems with its employees. Sometimes the term refers only to the organization's internal website, but often it is a more extensive part of the organization's computer infrastructure and private. Such a move usually requires changing the IP address of a resource and the corresponding translation of this IP address to and from its domain name.

This article primarily discusses the group of domain names that are offered by domain name registrars for registration by the public. The Domain Name System The Domain Name System is a hierarchical naming system for computers, services, or any resource participating in the Internet. It associates various information with the domain names assigned to each of the participants. Most importantly, it translates domain names meaningful to humans into the numerical (binary) identifiers associated with article discusses the technical facilities and infrastructure of the domain name space In general, a namespace is an abstract container providing context for the items it holds and allowing disambiguation of items having the same name (residing in different namespaces) and the hostname A hostname is the unique name by which a network-attached device is known on a network. The hostname is used to identify a particular host in various forms of electronic communication such as the World Wide Web, e-mail or Usenet article deals with specific information about the use of domain names as identifiers of network hosts.

Allowed character set

Registered domain names are restricted to using the same character set as all other hostnames A hostname is the unique name by which a network-attached device is known on a network. The hostname is used to identify a particular host in various forms of electronic communication such as the World Wide Web, e-mail or Usenet, as such they typically can use only ASCII American Standard Code for Information Interchange , pronounced /ˈæski/ is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that work with text. Most modern character-encoding schemes—which support many more characters than did the letters, numbers and the hyphen (-). The full stop A full stop or period (sometimes stop, full point, or dot), is the punctuation mark commonly placed at the end of several different types of sentences in English and many other languages. A full stop consists of a small dot placed at the end of a line of text, such as at the end of a sentence (dot, .) is used to separate DNS labels The Domain Name System is a hierarchical naming system for computers, services, or any resource participating in the Internet. It associates various information with the domain names assigned to each of the participants. Most importantly, it translates domain names meaningful to humans into the numerical (binary) identifiers associated with. Since this rule does not allow the use of other characters commonly found in non-English languages, and does not allow multi-byte characters necessary for most Asian languages, the Internationalized domain name An internationalized domain name is an Internet domain name that contains one or more non-ASCII characters. Such domain names could contain letters with diacritics, as required by many non-English languages, or characters from non-Latin scripts such as Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese or Hindi. However, the standard for domain names does not allow such (IDN) system has been developed and is now in testing stage for a group of top-level domains A top-level domain or domain name is the highest level of domain names in the root zone of the Domain Name System of the Internet. For all domains in lower levels, it is the last part of the domain name, that is, the label that follows the last dot of a fully qualified domain name. For example, in the domain name www.example.com, the top-level established for this purpose.

The underscore character is frequently used to ensure that a domain name is not recognized as a hostname, as with the use of SVR DNS server records An SRV record or Service record is a category of data in the Internet Domain Name System specifying information on available services. It is defined in RFC 2782. Newer internet protocols such as SIP and XMPP often require SRV support from clients, for example, although some older systems such as NetBIOS NetBIOS is an acronym for Network Basic Input/Output System. It provides services related to the session layer of the OSI model allowing applications on separate computers to communicate over a local area network. As strictly an API, NetBIOS is not a networking protocol. Older operating systems ran NetBIOS over IEEE 802.2 and IPX/SPX using the did allow it. To avoid confusion and for other reasons, domain names with underscores in them are sometimes used where hostnames are required.

Domain names are often referred to simply as domains and domain name registrants are frequently referred to as domain owners, although domain name registration with a registrar does not confer any legal ownership of the domain name, only an exclusive right of use.

Examples

The following example illustrates the difference between a URL In computing, a Uniform Resource Locator is a type of Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) that specifies where an identified resource is available and the mechanism for retrieving it. In popular usage and in many technical documents and verbal discussions it is often incorrectly used as a synonym for URI. In popular language, a URL is also referred (Uniform Resource Locator) and a domain name:

URL: http://www.example.net/index.html

Domain name: www.example.net

Registered domain name: example.net

As a general rule, the IP address and the server name are interchangeable. For most Internet services, the server will not have any way to know which was used. However, the explosion of interest in the Web means that there are far more Web sites than servers. To accommodate this, the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol is an application-level protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. Its use for retrieving inter-linked resources led to the establishment of the World Wide Web) specifies that the client A client is an application or system that accesses a remote service on another computer system, known as a server, by way of a network. The term was first applied to devices that were not capable of running their own stand-alone programs, but could interact with remote computers via a network. These dumb terminals were clients of the time-sharing tells the server which name is being used. This way, one server with one IP address can provide different sites for different domain names. This feature goes under the name virtual hosting Virtual hosting is a method that servers such as web servers use to host more than one domain name on the same computer, sometimes on the same IP address and is commonly used by web hosts A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to provide their own website accessible via the World Wide Web. Web hosts are companies that provide space on a server they own or lease for use by their clients as well as providing Internet connectivity, typically in a data center. Web hosts can.

For example, as referenced in RFC 2606 (Reserved Top Level DNS Names), the server at IP address 208.77.188.166 handles all of the following sites:

example.com

www.example.com

example.net

www.example.net

example.org

www.example.org

Top-level domains

The top-level domains A top-level domain or domain name is the highest level of domain names in the root zone of the Domain Name System of the Internet. For all domains in lower levels, it is the last part of the domain name, that is, the label that follows the last dot of a fully qualified domain name. For example, in the domain name www.example.com, the top-level (TLDs) are the highest level of domain names of the Internet. They form the DNS root zone A DNS root zone is the top DNS zone of the Domain Name System hierarchy for a given DNS system. The term, when not otherwise qualified, is generally used to refer to the root zone of the largest global DNS system deployed on the Internet. This official DNS system is by far the largest deployment of DNS in the world. The zone is managed by the of the hierarchical Domain Name System The Domain Name System is a hierarchical naming system for computers, services, or any resource participating in the Internet. It associates various information with the domain names assigned to each of the participants. Most importantly, it translates domain names meaningful to humans into the numerical (binary) identifiers associated with. Every domain name ends in a top-level or first-level domain label.

When the Domain Name System was created in the 1980s, the domain name space was divided into two main groups of domains.^[1] The country code top-level domains A country code top-level domain is an Internet top-level domain generally used or reserved for a country (a sovereign state or a dependent territory) (ccTLD) were primarily based on the two-character territory codes of ISO-3166 ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes are two-letter country codes defined in ISO 3166-1, part of the ISO 3166 standard published by the International Organization for Standardization , to represent countries, dependent territories, and special areas of geographical interest. They are the most widely used of the country codes published by ISO, and are used country abbreviations. In addition, a group of seven generic top-level domains A generic top-level domain is one of the categories of top-level domains (TLDs) maintained by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) for use on the Internet (gTLD) was implemented which represented a set of categories of names and multi-organizations.^[2] These were the domains GOV .gov, pronounced "dot-gov," is a sponsored top-level domain restricted for use by government entities in the United States. The .gov domain is administered by the General Services Administration , an independent agency of the United States federal government. The URL for registration services is http://www.dotgov.gov , EDU edu is the sponsored top-level domain for educational institutions, primarily those in the United States. Although not officially mandated for much of the domain's existence, in practice it has been used primarily for U.S.-based four-year universities. Starting in 2001, it was officially restricted to accredited postsecondary institutions and, COM .com is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) used on the Internet's Domain Name System. It was one of the original top-level domains (TLDs, the other five being .edu, .gov, .mil, .net and .org) established in January 1985, and has grown to be the largest TLD in use. It was originally administered by the United States Department of Defense. The DoD, MIL mil is the sponsored top-level domain for the United States Department of Defense and its subsidiary organizations. It was one of the first top-level domains, created in January 1985, ORG org is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) used in the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS). In the typical style of most gTLDs, org is sometimes pronounced in word form as 'org', 'dot-org', or 'dot-oh-are-gee (O R G)' when spoken, although not all users of the TLD agree on this usage, NET net is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) used on the Internet's Domain Name System. The net gTLD is currently operated by VeriSign. Registrations are processed via accredited registrars and internationalized domain names are also accepted (see details), and INT .int is a sponsored top-level domain (gTLD) used on the Internet's Domain Name System.

During the growth of the Internet, it became desirable to create additional generic top-level domains. As of June 2009, there are 20 generic top-level domains and 248 country code top-level domains.^[3] In addtion, the ARPA arpa is an Internet top-level domain used exclusively for Internet infrastructure purposes. The name is a backronym for Address and Routing Parameter Area domain serves technical purposes in the infrastructure of the Domain Name System.

During the 32nd International Public ICANN Meeting in Paris in 2008,^[4] ICANN started a new process of TLD naming policy to take a "significant step forward on the introduction of new generic top-level domains." This program envisions the availability of many new or already proposed domains, as well a new application and implementation process.^[5] Observers believed that the new rules could result in hundreds of new top-level domain to be registered.^[6]

An annotated list of top-level domains in the root zone database is published at the IANA website at http://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/ and a Wikipedia list While the following list should be correct, there is a more definitive list on the IANA website exists.

Second-level and lower level domains

Below the top-level domains in the domain name hierarchy are the second-level domain In the Domain Name System hierarchy, a second-level domain (SLD) is a domain that is directly below a top-level domain (TLD). For example, in wikipedia.org, wikipedia is the second-level domain of the .org TLD (SLD) names. These are the names directly to the left of .com, .net, and the other top-level domains. As an example, in the domain en.wikipedia.org, wikipedia is the second-level domain.

Next are third-level domains, which are written immediately to the left of a second-level domain. There can be fourth- and fifth-level domains, and so on, with virtually no limitation. An example of a working domain with four domain levels is www.sos.state.oh.us. The www preceding the domains is a host name of the World-Wide Web server. Each level is separated by a dot, or period symbol. 'sos' is said to be a sub-domain of 'state.oh.us', and 'state' a sub-domain of 'oh.us', etc. In general, subdomains The Domain Name System has a tree structure or hierarchy, with each node on the tree being a domain name. A subdomain is a domain that is part of a larger domain, the only domain that isn't also a subdomain is the root domain. For example, "mail.example.com" and "calendar.example.com" are subdomains of the "example.com& are domains subordinate to their parent domain. An example of very deep levels of subdomain ordering are the IPv6 Internet Protocol version 6 is the next-generation Internet Protocol version designated as the successor to version 4, IPv4, the first implementation used in the Internet and still in dominant use currently[update]. It is an Internet Layer protocol for packet-switched internetworks. The main driving force for the redesign of Internet Protocol was reverse resolution DNS zones, e.g., 1.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.ip6.arpa, which is the reverse DNS resolution domain for the IP address of a loopback interface, or the localhost name.

Second-level (or lower-level, depending on the established parent hierarchy) domain names are often created based on the name of a company (e.g., microsoft.com), product or service (e.g., gmail.com). Below these levels, the next domain name component has been used to designate a particular host server. Therefore, ftp.wikipedia.org might be an FTP server, www.wikipedia.org would be a World Wide Web server, and mail.wikipedia.org could be an email server, each intended to perform only the implied function. Modern technology allows multiple physical servers with either different (cf. load balancing) or even identical addresses (cf. anycast) to serve a single hostname or domain name, or multiple domain names to be served by a single computer. The latter is very popular in Web hosting service centers, where service providers host the websites of many organizations on just a few servers.

Official assignment

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has overall responsibility for managing the DNS. It administers the root domain, delegating control over each TLD to a domain name registry. For ccTLDs, the domain registry is typically installed by the government of that country. ICANN has a consultation role in these domain registries but cannot regulate the terms and conditions of how domain names are delegated in each of the country-level domain registries. On the other hand, the generic top-level domains (gTLDs) are governed directly under ICANN, which means all terms and conditions are defined by ICANN with the cooperation of each gTLD registry.

Domain names are often seen in analogy to real estate in that (1) domain names are foundations on which a website (like a house or commercial building) can be built and (2) the highest "quality" domain names, like sought-after real estate, tend to carry significant value, usually due to their online brand-building potential, use in advertising, search engine optimization, and many other criteria.

A few companies have offered low-cost, below-cost or even cost-free domain registrations with a variety of models adopted to recoup the costs to the provider. These usually require that domains be hosted on their website within a framework or portal that includes advertising wrapped around the domain holder's content, revenue from which allows the provider to recoup the costs. Domain registrations were free of charge when the DNS was new. A domain holder (often referred to as a domain owner) can give away or sell infinite number of subdomains under their domain name. For example, the owner of example.edu could provide subdomains such as foo.example.edu and foo.bar.example.edu to interested parties.

Abuses

As domain names became interesting to marketers because of their advertising and marketing potential, rather than just being used to label Internet resources in a technical fashion, they began to be used in manners that in many cases did not reflect the intended purpose of the label of their top-level domain. As originally planned, the structure of domain names followed a hierarchy in which the TLD indicated the type of organization (commercial, governmental, etc.), and addresses would be nested down to third, fourth, or further levels to express complex structures, where, for instance, branches, departments and subsidiaries of a parent organization would have addresses in subdomains of the parent domain. Also, hostnames were originally intended to correspond to actual physical machines on the network, generally with only one name per machine.

As the World Wide Web became popular, site operators frequently wished to have memorable addresses, regardless of whether they fit properly into the structure; thus, because the .com domain was the most popular and therefore most prestigious, even noncommercial sites began to obtain domains directly within that gTLD, and many sites desired second-level domain names in .com, even if they were already part of a larger entity where a subdomain would have been logical (e.g., abcnews.com instead of news.abc.com).

Shorter, and therefore more memorable, domain names are thought to have more appeal. As a convenience, methods were implemented to reduce the amount of typing required when entering a web site address into the location field of a web browser. A website found at ''http://www.example.org'' will often be advertised without the http://, since the HTTP protocol is implicitly assumed when referring to web sites. In many cases, web sites can be also be reached by omitting the www prefix, as in this given example. This feature is usually implemented in DNS by the website administrator. In the case of a .com, the website can sometimes be reached by just entering example (depending on browser versions and configuration settings, which vary in how they interpret incomplete addresses).

The popularity of domain names also led to uses which were regarded as abusive by established companies with trademark rights; this has become known as cybersquatting, in which a person registers a domain name that resembles a trademark in order to profit from visitors looking for that address. To combat this, various laws and policies were enacted to allow abusive registrations to be forcibly transferred, but these were sometimes themselves abused by overzealous companies committing reverse domain hijacking against domain users who had legitimate grounds to hold their names. Such legitimate uses could include the use of generic words that are contained within a trademark, but used in a particular context within the trademark, or their use in the context of fan or protest sites with free speech rights of their own.

Laws that specifically address domain name conflicts include the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act in the United States and the Trademarks Act of 1999 in India. Alternatively, domain registrants are bound by contract under the UDRP to comply with mandatory arbitration proceedings should someone challenge their ownership of a domain name.

Often email phishing scams will abuse subdomain names to appear to be a legitimate site. For instance, an email might purport to be from Bank of America, and include a link to a fake login screen hosted on http://www.bankofamerica.com.abc.def.ghi.jkl In this case, the actual domain is ghi.jkl, but appears at first glance to be bankofamerica.com.

Generic domain names—problems arising from unregulated name selection

Within a particular TLD, parties are generally free to register an undelegated domain name on a first come, first served basis, resulting in Harris's lament, all the good ones are taken. For generic or commonly used names, this may sometimes lead to the use of a domain name which is inaccurate or misleading. This problem can be seen with regard to the ownership or control of domain names for a generic product or service. By way of illustration, there has been tremendous growth in the number and size of literary festivals around the world in recent years. In the current context, a generic domain name such as literary.org is available to the first literary festival organization that is able to obtain the registration, even if the festival in question is very young or obscure. Some critics argue that there is greater amenity in reserving such domain names for the use of, for example, a regional or umbrella grouping of festivals. Related issues may also arise in relation to noncommercial domain names.

Unconventional domain names

Due to the rarity of one-word dot-com domain names, many unconventional domain names, domain hacks, have been created. They make use of the top-level domain as an integral part of the Web site's title. Two popular domain hack Web sites are cr.yp.to and blo.gs, which spell out "crypto" and "blogs", respectively.

Unconventional domain names are also used to create unconventional email addresses. Non-working examples that spell 'James' are j@m.es and j@mes.com, which use the domain names m.es (of Spain's .es) and mes.com, respectively.

Premium domain names

In the business of marketing domain names, "premium" domain names are often valuable, and have particular characteristics that are used in in the domain appraisal process. For example, the names are short, memorable, may contain words that are regularly searched on search engines, and/or keywords that help the domain name gain a higher ranking on search engines. They may contain generic words, so the domain has more than one meaning.

Very short .com domains are valuable as their number is limited. Among the 26 single-letter second-level domains, few are registered because the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority reserved them in 1993. Those that were already registered were not recalled.

Resale of domain names

The business of resale of previously registered domain names is known as the "domain aftermarket".

Various factors influence the perceived value or market value of a domain name. They include 1) the natural or "organic" traffic that can be attributed to web surfers typing in a domain name in their web browser as opposed to doing a search for the site through a search engine. 2) Branding Opportunity. The ability to have a term recognized and easily recalled as a brand for a company or entity. 3) Re-sale value. The ability to spot trends and predict the value of a name based on its length (short is preferred), clarity, and commercial use. The word "loan" is far more valuable than the word "sunshine".

Generic domain names have sprung up in the last decade. Certain domains, especially those related to business, gambling, pornography, and other commercially lucrative fields of digital world trade have become very much in demand to corporations and entrepreneurs due to their importance in attracting clients.

There are disputes about the high values of domain names claimed and the actual cash prices of many sales such as Business.com. Another high-priced domain name, sex.com, was stolen from its rightful owner by means of a forged transfer instruction via fax. During the height of the dot-com era, the domain was earning millions of dollars per month in advertising revenue from the large influx of visitors that arrived daily. The sex.com sale may have never been final as the domain is still with the previous owner. Also, that sale was not just a domain but an income stream, a web site, a domain name with customers and advertisers, etc. Two long-running U.S. lawsuits resulted, one against the thief and one against the domain registrar VeriSign ^[7]. In one of the cases, Kremen v. Network Solutions, the court found in favor of the plaintiff, leading to an unprecedented ruling that classified domain names as property, granting them the same legal protections. In 1999, Microsoft traded the name Bob.com with internet entrepreneur Bob Kerstein for the name Windows2000.com which was the name of their new operating system. ^[8]

One of the reasons for the value of domain names is that even without advertising or marketing, they attract clients seeking services and products who simply type in the generic name. This is known as Direct Navigation or Type-in Traffic. Furthermore, generic domain names such as movies.com (now owned by Disney) or Books.com (now owned by Barnes & Noble) are extremely easy for potential customers to remember, increasing the probability that they become repeat customers or regular clients. In the case of Movies.com, Disney has built a stand-alone portal featuring branded content. More and more large brands are beginning to employ a more comprehensive domain strategy featuring a portfolio of thousands of domains, rather than just one or two.

Although the current domain market is nowhere as strong as it was during the dot-com heyday, it remains strong and is currently experiencing solid growth again. ^[9] Annually tens of millions of dollars change hands in connection with the resale of domains. Large numbers of registered domain names lapse and are deleted each year. On average, more than 25,000 domain names drop (are deleted) every day.

It is important to remember that a domain (name, address) must be valued separately from the website (content, revenue) that it is used for. The high prices have usually been paid for the revenue that was generated from the website at the domain's address (URL.). The intrinsic value of a domain is the registration fee. It is difficult to appraise a current market value for a domain. The Fair Market Value of a domain can be anything from nearly nothing to millions of dollars. Factors involved may include previous sales data of similar domains, however a single letter difference can completely alter the value. The value of the domain (or any sum resp. division etc.) are usually added to the current or expected revenue from the web content (advertising, sales, etc.). The price of a domain (name + ext.) should not be confused with that of a website (content + revenue).

An estimate by an appraiser is always the addition of what they would like a domain to be worth together with the effective/expected/desired revenue from the web content. Some people put value on the length of the SLD (name) and other people prefer description capability, but the shorter an SLD is, the less descriptive it can be. Also, if short is crucial, then the TLD (extension) should be short too. It is less realistic to get a domain like LL.travel or LL.mobi than a domain travel. LL or mobi. LL. This illustrates the relativity of domain value estimation. It is safe to say that the revenue of web (content) can be easily stated, but that the value of a domain (SLD.TLD aka name.ext) is a matter of opinion and preference. In the end, however, any sale depends on the expectations of the domain seller and the domain buyer.

A webmaster creating a new web site either buys the domain name directly from a domain name registrar, or indirectly from a domain name registrar through a domainer. People who buy and sell domain names are known as domainers. People who sell value estimation services are known as appraisers.

Domain aftermarket prices and trends

Domain name sales occurring in the aftermarket are frequently submitted to the DN journal. The sales are listed weekly and include the top aftermarket resellers which include but are not limited to Sedo, Traffic (auctions), Afternic, NameJet, Moniker and private sales.

To date, and according to Guinness World Records and MSNBC, the most expensive domain name sales on record as of 2004 were^[9]:

• Business.com for $7.5 million in December 1999
• AsSeenOnTv.com for $5.1 million in January 2000
• Altavista.com for $3.3 million in August 1998
• Wine.com for $2.9 million in September 1999
• CreditCards.com for $2.75 million in July 2004
• Autos.com for $2.2 million in December 1999

The week ending January 27, 2008, DNJournal reported that CNN, a cable news channel purchased iReport.com for $750,000. The high price for iReport.com, as in "I Report," was because it was branded by CNN as CNN's news crowdsourcing prior to the purchase of the domain name. Likewise, AltaVista was branded as a search engine prior to the high purchase price of the domain name.

Popular domain prefixes - "E" and "I"

In addition to a domain placing value on the shortness of the word, ease in spelling, commercial appeal, and organic capacity to generate natural traffic, today's domain names are being valued for the branding potential. The domain name sale iReport although not an organic or dictionary term alone, is actually preferred as a highly brandable term, in that it is has a popular pre-fix "i" which indicates the "report" to be online.

The prefixes and dashes between words were once considered second, but now due to brandability, if the term is a commercial term, a prefix is often preferred. Example eLoans markets with an e to indicate to its potential customers that a loan may be obtained online.

The two primary prefixes are "E", for electronic, and "I", for Internet. Both indicate the word or phrase to be accessible online. Because of that, in terms of branding, an i or e combined with a commercial term are highly desirable. In domain sales typically an e has been preferred, and i slightly less in terms of demand. eBrooklyn sold for approximately $2500 whereas once it would have been available to register at the price of a domain name (which ranges from $8 to $30 us dollars depending on the registrar). The rapidly increasing use of prefixes in conjunction with main dictionary and or commercial terms is here and for some predominantly internet based companies, or high technology, high profile companies, the prefix is now preferred.

One of the details that make a domain with a prefix more valuable for a brand, is the ability to simply promote the name without the use of ".com" in the promotion. If a domain owner had report.com he would be forced to use the .com to indicate it was on the net at that address, however a domain name with a one letter prefix does not need to use the ".com".

Someone could promote "iReport" as a brand, and assuming it was a world class brand, visitors would know they could find it at "iReport.com without seeing the .com. However if it was a .net, it would be wise to state iReport.net. This option to simply state the name of the company or entity is particularly valuable in that it is brief and clear in indicating that a report can be either made or found on the "i"nternet.

eLoans similarly does not have to state "eLoans.com". eLoans, in the minds of most is clearly an online entity offering electronic loan applications.

Some alternative domains that avoid the use of ".com" in their promotion are "WebMD" as the word web as a prefix suffice to indicate the information is online and likely at a .com extension.

Branding with a domain name

Brands are greatly affected by the ability of the company to obtain the matching domain name. If a company builds a brand around a name to which it does not own the domain name, it can end up directing traffic to another domain owner's site. If it is a competitor, this would be a problem.

Today's advertising development of a great brand is strictly confined to the availability to synchronize the brand with a domain name. Any confusion might result in a competitor gaining valuable internet traffic and possible customers.

Domain name confusion

Intercapping is often used to emphasize the meaning of a domain name. However, DNS names are case-insensitive, and some names may be misinterpreted in certain uses of capitalization. For example: Who Represents, a database of artists and agents, chose whorepresents.com, which can be misread as whore presents. Similarly, a therapists' network is named therapistfinder.com. Another example is powergenitalia.com, the website of an Italian power generator company. In such situations, the proper meaning may be clarified by use of hyphens in the domain name. For instance, Experts Exchange, the programmers' site, for a long time used expertsexchange.com, but ultimately changed the name to experts-exchange.com.

Leo Stoller threatened to sue the owners of StealThisEmail.com on the basis that, when read as stealthisemail.com, it infringed on claimed (but invalid) trademark rights to the word "stealth". ^[10]

References

1. ^ "Introduction to Top-Level Domains (gTLDs)". Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. http://www.icann.org/en/tlds/.
2. ^ RFC 920, Domain Requirements, J. Postel, J. Reynolds, The Internet Society (October 1984)
3. ^ "List of top-level domains". ICANN. http://data.iana.org/TLD/tlds-alpha-by-domain.txt.
4. ^ "32nd International Public ICANN Meeting". ICANN. 2008-06-22. http://par.icann.org/.
5. ^ "New gTLS Program". ICANN. http://www.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtld-program.htm. Retrieved on 2009-06-15.
6. ^ ICANN Board Approves Sweeping Overhaul of Top-level Domains, CircleID, 26 June 2008.
7. ^ Sex.com Settles With VeriSign
8. ^ Windows2000.com owner sells domain to Microsoft
9. ^ ^{a b} Domain name sells for $2.75 million
10. ^ Steal This v. Stealth Is: Community Technology Collective Bullied Over Misreading of URL

See also

• Domain transfer
• Domain hack
• Domain hijacking
• Domain name warehousing
• Domain tasting
• Domaining
• Fully qualified domain name
• Geodomain
• ICANN
• Internationalized domain name
• Name generator
• Public domain issues of domain names
• Uniform Resource Locator
• Web page
• Web site
• World Wide Web

External links

• IANA generic TLD
• IANA Two letter Country Code TLD
• ICANN - Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.
• Internic.net, public information regarding Internet domain name registration services.
• RFC 1034, Domain Names — Concepts and Facilities, an Internet Protocol Standard.
• RFC 1035, Domain Names — Implementation and Specification, an Internet Protocol Standard.
• UDRP, Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy.

Categories: Domain name system | Identifiers

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