What Does .com Stand For?

What does .com stand for in a web address?

A web address is read from right to left when it comes to rank. The last part, after the final dot, is called the top level domain. In example.com, a name set aside for teaching and testing, the top level domain is com, and it stands for commercial.

• example is the name someone chose and registered.
• .com is the ending, the commercial domain.
• A www at the front, when present, is a separate label for the web server. See what www stands for.

The dot is part of how the ending is written. When people talk about it, they say "dot com."

The first domain endings and what they meant

When the domain name system was set up, a small group of endings was created, each one meant for a type of user.

Of these, .edu, .gov and .mil still have strict rules about who may use them. The .com, .org and .net endings were later opened to everyone.

Why .com became the default

Businesses rushed online in the 1990s, and nearly all of them picked .com. People learned to type it at the end of almost any address, so a name that ended any other way felt harder to remember. The ending became so linked to online business that "a dot com" turned into a noun for an internet company.

That same habit gave its name to the dot com bubble, the period in the late 1990s when many new internet companies drew huge investment and then failed in the early 2000s.

Country codes and newer endings

Besides the generic endings, every country has a two letter code, such as .us for the United States, .ca for Canada and .uk for the United Kingdom. Many sites outside the US use their country code instead of .com.

There are now hundreds of newer endings too, built from ordinary words about shops, places, hobbies and more. Even so, .com remains the one most people try first when they guess an address.

Pronouncing and typing dot com

• Out loud, it is two short words: "dot com."
• In an address, write it in lowercase with the dot: .com. Web addresses are not case sensitive, so capital letters still work.
• When writing about the era or the type of business, many style guides use "dot-com" with a hyphen, as in a dot-com company. Inside a regular sentence, "dot com" as two words is also understood.
• Do not add a space between the name and the ending in an address.

For other web letters, see URL and DNS, or browse the tech acronyms collection.

Quick checks before you trust an address

Because the ending is open to everyone, it does not prove that a site is a real company. A few habits help:

• Read the whole name just before .com. A small misspelling can point to a different site.
• Look at what comes after .com. Anything after the first single slash is just a page on that site.
• Expect official US government sites to end in .gov, not .com.

These checks take a few seconds and help you avoid copycat pages.