Domain detectives

Well, we are all aware of the various domain endings that are attached to the end of a website address, but what do they mean? The reason for the different types of domains are not so that they can confuse us, but are there so that we are able to easily identify whether the website is for example,  a government website, an organisation or a commercial website.

Not only is this useful but when I first started university, I found it very difficult to identify which websites are useful, valid and reliable to include in my assignments. Academic websites are usually those which include .gov, .edu, and .ac.uk as their domain. If in doubt, you can always check this using a website called easyWhois.com. Through this, you can check the website's domain, registrant, validity and much more.

There are a number of different domain names; some of these include: .com, .net, .co.uk, .ac.uk/.edu, .org, .gov, .int.

 Let's us start with the most common domain, .com. This means that the website you are using is commercial; usually these websites are for-profit. This means that majority of this domain's websites are used for selling. For example, with the website Waterstones.com, you can purchase books and stationary. 

Governmental websites can be identified by the .gov domain. Such websites are credible as they are up to date and reliable. These websites can be used for academic research and demographic data. I regularly use the Welsh government and Swansea government websites for information on key pieces of legislation, the curriculum and demographics on the Swansea area.

Academic institution's websites such as university websites have an ac.uk domain. This hints to the researcher that these websites are valid and can be a reliable source of information.

Different countries have different domain endings; some of these are: .it (Italy)

                .it (Italy)                                                 .jp (Japan)

      

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      .co.uk (UK)                                                      .fr (France)

         

                                                                                        

The domain .org is defined as organisation. This is associated with non-profit organisations such as the British Heart Foundation  and the PDSA animal charity. however, it should be taken into account that any person can register for a .org domain, so be careful of sham websites.

In this blog post we have explored some of the common domains that are associated with different websites. I hope this post will be of some help to understand some of the meanings behind the domain names; now you can become detectives and investigate for yourselves as to which sites are useful and those which are shams!