Top Level Domain

A top-level domain (“TLD”) a.k.a “domain extension” is the portion of a domain name to the right of the dot. TLDs hold the highest level in the hierarchy of the Internet’s domain name system.

What is a Top Level Domain example?

The first top-level domains were:

1. .com is the most famous TLD
2. .edu is a TLD that is reserved for USA-based accredited Universities
3. .gov is the US Government’s TLD
4. .org is a general namespace TLD that is used by both nonprofit and for-profit organizations
5. .net is a general purpose namespace that was originally named for network technology companies
6. .mil is reserved for US military branches:
   • United States Army
   • United States Navy
   • United States Marine Corps
   • United States Air Force
   • United States Coast Guard
7. Internet country code top-level domains (ccTLDs) were added to give each country its own namespace using two-letter country codes, such as:
   • .ai is the ccTLD for Anguilla
   • .au is the ccTLD for Australia
   • .ca is the ccTLD for Canada
   • .co is the ccTLD for Columbia
   • .io is the ccTLD for the Indian Ocean
   • .mx is the ccTLD for Mexico
   • .uk is the ccTLD for Great Britain

In 2019, more than 1700 TLDs currently exist, most of which are called ngTLDs, such as .app, .pics, .world, and .xyz

Click to see our complete TLD list.

What is a Domain Name?

A domain name sometimes comprises just a top-level domain (“TLD”) to the right of the dot

For example, here are some simple domain names:

https://www.hr/

.org forwards to https://www.w3.org/

A domain name that you can buy comprises a word or set of characters to the left of the dot plus a top-level domain to the right of the dot.

Eg. DomainAuthority.org is the domain name and .org is the TLD.

What is the Most Popular Top Level Domain?

.COM is the most popular top-level domain, with more than 140,860,141 registrations as of July 13, 2019. That’s 9,810,833 more .com domains that were registered in the last six months. There were 131,049,308 registrations as of January 31, 2018. So .com remains the top choice for all new domains.

What is the Most Valuable Top Level Domain?

.COM top-level domains are the most valuable domains. Most 4-letter (LLLL.com) domains are considered liquid domains in that they are sold and auctioned often in the 5 and 6 figures. In June 2019, a billionaire bought Voice.com for a startup free speech platform for $30 million USD. In comparison, GoDaddy estimates that the wholesale value of Voice.ca is $10,975, voice.net is $15,110, and voice.org is $19,152 USD.

What are the Top 25 TLDs for Domain Authority?

The number of top-level domains that rank in the top 1 million websites according to their Alexa rank is a good measure for domain authority by each TLD.

However, since there are not that many .edu, .gov, and .mil websites, Google probably still skews the results and give greater backlink authority to these top-level domains than websites using other TLDs, since they are considered the most authoritative top-level domains. Websites built on .edu University domains generally have great authoritative content as do .gov and .mil, because US Government domains have traditionally been seen as a reliable source of information.

The following chart ranks top 25 top-level domains, by the number of websites ranking in the Alexa 1 million top websites list:

	TLD	Alexa1M	New	Total
	.TLD	Alexa1M	New	Total
	.COM	505,399	72,695	140,860,141
	.RU	101,315		4,960,935
	.NET	39,652	4,717	13,371,001
	.ORG	37,984	3,817	10,039,948
	.IN	18,540		2,018,884
	.IR	16,112		1,080,815
	.BR	11,678		4,061,895
	.AU	9,212		3,195,166
	.TR	8,855		404,042
	.INFO	8,818	2,565	4,608,010
	.UK	8,802	6,927	11,387,790
	.VN	8,412		481,855
	.UA	8,302		535,735
	.ID	8,160		321,307
	.CO	7,869
	.DE	7,650		16,260,738
	.IO	6,517
	.GR	6,265
	.FR	5,758		3,399,464
	.CA	5,559		2,825,463
	.JP	5,450		1,569,923
	.KZ	4,500		147,913
	.ZA	4,277		1,264,123
	.TW	3,940		6,701,526
	.PL	3,932		2,601,388

List created using DomainNameStats.com

Does TLD Impact SEO?

Officially, Google said that the top-level domain should not impact SEO, on July 21, 2015.

Q: How will new gTLDs affect search? Is Google changing the search algorithm to favor these TLDs? How important are they really in search? 
A: Overall, our systems treat new gTLDs like other gTLDs (like .com & .org). Keywords in a TLD do not give any advantage or disadvantage in search.

Q: Will a .BRAND TLD be given any more or less weight than a .com?
A: No. Those TLDs will be treated the same as a other gTLDs. They will require the same geotargeting settings and configuration, and they won’t have more weight or influence in the way we crawl, index, or rank URLs.

However, there are other factors at play, such as the click-through rate on searches and trust level of various top-level domains. So your TLD remains a factor impacting the SEO of your websites.

And country code domains, such as .ca and .cn remain a good choice because Google gives them a preference by geotargeting searches so that users get more relevant content delivered in their searches:

Q: How are the new region or city TLDs (like .london or .bayern) handled?
A: Even if they look region-specific, we will treat them as gTLDs. This is consistent with our handling of regional TLDs like .eu and .asia. There may be exceptions at some point down the line, as we see how they’re used in practice. See our help center for more information on multi-regional and multilingual sites, and set geotargeting in Search Console where relevant.

Q: What about real ccTLDs (country code top-level domains) : will Google favor ccTLDs (like .uk, .ae, etc.) as a local domain for people searching in those countries?
A: By default, most ccTLDs (with exceptions) result in Google using these to geotarget the website; it tells us that the website is probably more relevant in the appropriate country. Again, see our help center for more information on multi-regional and multilingual sites.

Therefore, if you are a Canadian business, a .ca top-level domain will give you an edge for searches done in Canada. The exceptions are probably top-level domains such as .io and .ai.

Top Level Domain Statistics