What are top-level domains?

A top-level domain – or a TLD – is whatever comes after the domain name (or the root) itself.

Take stangerup.net for example. Here, stangerup is the domain name while .net is the top-level domain. Nowadays, there are several TLDs to choose from; as the internet has expanded, generic TLDs like .com have become scarce, resulting in a need for more TLDs. This is why we’re starting to see more abbreviations like .app, .io, .online, and .xyz to mention a few.

Different types of TLDs

• Infrastructural TLDs (only .arpa)
• Generic TLDs (.com, .net, .org etc.)
• Country-code TLDs (.au, .uk, .jp etc.)
• Sponsored TLDs (.app, .gov etc.)
• Reserved TLDs (.amazon, .apple etc.)

You can read more about the different types of TLDs here.