Other Top Level Domains

A domain name may have several parts separated by dots like shop.sheffield.co.uk.  Those parts have names

• uk is the TLD
• co. is the second level name, most commercial websites use the .co.uk suffix but there are others available, intended for special purposes .ac.uk for example is reserved for academic institutions (largely universities), .gov.uk is exclusively fort government use.  Until 2014 all UK names had to have a second level name, anyone can now buy a .uk name without a second level part (but most .co.uk name owners bought the corresponding .uk variant to prevent any third party taking it and causing confusion).
• sheffield. is the third level, this is what you pay for when you buy a domain name in the UK TLD
• The owner of sheffield.co.uk can create subdomains at little or no additional cost, for example shop.sheffield.co.uk

Domain names ending .co.uk and .com are universally recognised and are the most sought after TLDs (in the English speaking world).  All the best names are long-gone.  Over 10 million uk and maybe 100 million .com names have been sold.

Alternative TLDs
There are numerous other TLDs. All countries have their own these are called a ccTLD (Country Code TLD).  It’s also possible to create other TLDs but they are extremely expensive to buy and to maintain, they are bought speculatively with a view to selling second level names to recover the cost. They are high risk because:

• The cost of those second level names is at the whim of the TLD owner
• If they don’t generate sufficient revenues they may exit the market and the TLD be closed down along with all the associated second level names
• They are not widely recognised
• Some are sold at a low “loss leader” price but with much higher annual renewal costs (a few even even running into the $thousands).
• They are sometimes marketed in a misleading manner for example at one time .uk.co was being sold as “the new replacement for .co.uk”.
  co is the ccTLD for the country of Colombia and an entrepreneur had purchases the second level name of uk. from Columbia’s name registry
• People are familiar with .com and .co.uk, if you ses a different TLD you’ll find some potential visitors and emails going to the corresponding .com or .co.uk addresses.
• There is also an issue with Google search, they try to localise search results to make them more relevant.  When you make a search in the UK higher prominence is given to example.co.uk than example.com, and much higher prominence than example.shop
  If you were to search for “Hotels in Birmingham” from the UK it could be very confusing to get a lengthy list that included hotels in Birmingham Alabama

Lets take an example: Disappointed that tesco.co.uk and tesco.com are sold? tesco.rich is available (at time of writing).
Why not buy that? Numerous reasons:

• Expect a letter from Tesco’s lawyers.
• Nobody is going to find your web site (except Tesco’s lawyers).
• Visitors need to know your address is tesco.rich otherwise they’ll guess and go to tesco.co.uk or tesco.com
• Whereas most of the original TLDs (like one for each country) are subject to price controls, many of the others are purely commercial, the annual fee can be high.  Worse, they can start at an affordable low cost but be subject of a massive price hike later.  Once your business relies on the name it’s very difficult to change. Last time I looked tesco.rich had an annual renewal price in the $thousands
• Some of the “new” TLDs have been deleted.  It’s costly to operate a TLD and if not generating sufficient revenue they get dropped.  If the .rich TLD were to get dropped your Tesco.rich website and email addresses would cease to exist.

Why hold on to a name you no longer need?

The history of UK domain names