GTLD or CCTLD, that is the question

Let's see together some fundamental points that will help you answer the following questions

What is a TLD? How many types of TLDs are there? Does the choice of TLD influence the visibility of the website? And which one to choose? When to choose a gTLD or a ccTLD? Conclusions What is a "TLD" or top-level domain? "TLD" is the abbreviation of the English word Top-Level Domain and is the last part of a domain name or the rightmost part that follows the "dot". For example host.it is a second level domain: the first level is ". it " and the second level is "host".

How many types of TLDs are there? Currently three different types have been classified:

National TLDs (country code top-level domain or ccTLD): these are the domains referring to a nation, for example for Italy it is .it or .de for Germany;

Generic TLDs (generic top-level domain or gtld): for example .com, .org, .info, .biz etc..

infrastructural top-level domains: to date "arpa" is the only one in existence.

a name="Visibility""Is the visibility of the website influenced by the TLD? On this topic, Google has expressed its opinion in a clear and irrefutable way: the choice of the TLD does not affect, in terms of advantage, the positioning in the search results pages.

Therefore, if for Google using one TLD rather than another does not bring any advantage in terms of positioning, the decision is up to us alone!

When to choose a gTLD or ccTLD? The answer depends mainly on three criteria:

from the marketing strategy;

from the target audience.

The national top-level domain can be a valid choice if the recipient of the good or our work is aimed at a specific country. For example: the .it domain can help gain user trust for business developed mainly in Italy; just like our company Host S.p.A. which is mainly aimed at national users although it includes several foreign (European) customers.

The ccTLD (generic) recalls the idea of internationality, bringing added value to companies that aim to globalize their brand, for example large fashion or food industry brands.

Conclusions The choice of internet domain is fundamental for the future of our business, Host.it offers the possibility to choose from over 392 available extensions

However, what is indicated above are intended as guidelines and useful ideas for choosing the extension that best suits your business starting from Google's authoritative opinion.

What if we changed our minds over the years? In the next article I will talk to you about changing the domain name associated with a web space, stay tuned!