What is Top-Level Domain (TLD)?

The top-level domain (TLD), sometimes called the internet domain extension, is the very last section of an internet domain name, located after the last dot, to help form a fully qualified domain name (FQDN). For example, the top-level domain of lifewire.com and google.com are both .com, but the TLD of wikipedia.org is .org.

ICANN recognizes the following types of TLDs:

• Generic Top-Level Domains (gTLD): These are the most popular types of TDLs. Some examples include ".edu" for educational sites and ."com" for commercial sites. These types of TLDs are available for registration.
• Country-Code Top-Level Domains (ccTLD): Every ccTLD recognizes a specific country and is generally two letters long. For example, the ccTLD for Australia is ".au".
• Sponsored Top-Level Domains (sTLD): These TLDs are supervised by private organizations.
• Infrastructure Top-Level Domains: There is only one TLD in this category, which is ".arpa". The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority controls this TLD for the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

Some of the TLDs and their explanations are as follows:

• .com - Commercial businesses
• .org - Organizations (generally charitable)
• .net - Network organizations
• .gov - U.S. government agencies
• .mil - Military
• .edu - Educational facilities like universities
• .th - Thailand
• .ca - Canada
• .au - Australia

For example, the top-level domain of lifewire.com and google.com are both .com, but the TLD of wikipedia.org is .org.