What is a top-level domain (TLD)?

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What is a top-level domain (TLD)?

A TLD is everything that follows the final stop in a domain name, i.e., the last segment of the domain name, before the “path”, as shown in the diagram below: 

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has authority over all TLDs used on the internet, and it delegates the responsibility of running these TLDs to registries; for example, .com is run by Verisign.

TLDs can be split up into two areas, general TLDs (gTLDs) like .com, which are usually open to anyone to use, and country-code TLDs (ccTLDs) which, historically were specific to a particular region or area and therefore restricted for use to people or organizations within these geographies. Nowadays, however, many ccTLDs are treated like gTLDs.

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