GTLD
GTLD (Generic Top Level Domain) is one of the two most common types of Top Level Domains (TLDs) along with Country Code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs). gTLDs are intended to provide information about the nature of a website. They are administered by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The top-level domain is the last level of a fully qualified domain name.
Types of generic top-level domains
There are two main types of generic top-level domains:
- sponsored top level domains,
- Non-Sponsored Top Level Domains.
The former are intended for government, military, non-profit, or educational institutions. For example, they consist of three or four characters. Education, .gov, .info. The latter, on the other hand, are centrally managed by IANA and do not represent a specific community. Initially, generic top-level domains could only consist of three characters or letters, e.g. .com, .net, .org. These were the first extensions to register your own domain name. After 2000, new generic top-level domains started to appear, such as .info, .agro, .tourism, .aero. They made it possible to more accurately determine the types of web pages.
gTLDs and SEO
The interesting thing is that the new generic top-level domains can support the SEO process. A well-done site migration (by implementing a 301 redirect and verifying the domain in Google Search Console) can be done from one .com domain to another gTLD without losing organic traffic. A more precise definition of a business domain with a matching domain name often results in a higher ranking in Google soon after the migration of a website.
