All About Domains (Infographic)
What is a domain? And how is it different from a website?
A domain corresponds to a physical location on the Internet. It’s analogous to a street address. And in that analogy, your website is like the building at that street address. For example, an address may be 135 Main St. But what’s there could be an office building, parking garage, a mansion, or small house. In this analogy, 135 Main St. is comparable to a domain, and the building that resides there is comparable to a website.
You might think of your domain as the brand name of your website. You may change your website (and probably should every few years) but your domain typically remains the same.
For a new business, selecting a domain name is very important. In the past we’ve suggested some rules for selecting a domain.
There’s actually a lot more to know about domains
The folks at Hosting Tribunal have published a very informative info graphic on the subject. Here it is.
Lots of interesting info…..do you have any stats on look-a-like domains that hackers use to trick folks in to revealing credentials or other important info? It’s recommended to avoid hyphens but wondering why?
Hi, Cathy — the hyphen issues is simple: people forget them and can end up on a different website. In your case, though, I see you have smartly registered both versions — with and without the hyphen — using a 301 redirect to send the errant searcher to the proper URL.
As for look-alike domains, I know you’re familiar with difficult-to-notice misspellings like rankmaglc.com instead of rankmagic.com, but there’s a new breed happening where the deception is much better. See this discussion from Krebs on Security: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/03/look-alike-domains-and-visual-confusion/