What is a website name?

A website name, also called a domain name, is a name associated with a numerical reference to an internet resource such as a website or web page. An simple example at the time of this writing would be Godaddy.com or 97.74.104.201. If you type Godaddy.com into the navigation toolbar in your browser you will end up at Godaddy’s website. You will also end up at the same location if you were to type 97.74.104.201 into the navigation toolbar in your browser.

The number in this case (97.74.104.201) is called an IP Address or Internet Protocol Address. So when you type in the website name Godaddy.com you are actual accessing the the name associated with the IP address 97.74.104.201. It is very much like a phone or address book.

Let’s say you were to look up the name Bob “He Owes Me Money” Johnson in your address book. You would most likely find the phone number associated with Bob’s name. In the case of a website name the computer does the associating for you.

The system the internet and your computer use to manage and access website names and associate them with IP Addresses is called a Domain Name System or DNS. Not be confused with “Donut Needs Sugar” or “Dragons Nasty Spit”.

The Domain Name System is used to translate numbers or IP Address into something a little easier for humans to understand. Just imagine if you had to remember to type in some variation of 12.345.678.910 every time you wanted to find something online.

Searching for a website name like Google.com Twitter.com and Facebook.com is a much easier way to go. Of course having worldwide recognizable brand like Google, Twitter and Facebook would also help.

A website name can be a world wide brand worth millions of dollars like Google, Twitter and Facebook or valuable only to single person like “ChucksKneeSurgeryPictures.com”.

I hope that doesn’t exist! Anyway, a website name is usually associated with what someone plans to do with it. For instance, a website name can be a personal name, the name of a business, the name of a product, or the name of a principle or concept.

A website name could also be a random word or phrase, a social or community group, some crazy concept or just about anything you can think of. A website name can be specifically related to what the website is about like Cars.com, or completely unrelated like Onion.com.

No matter what approach is taken the goal of owning a website name is to make it easier for people to understand, recognize or identify what your are offering or expressing.

Obtaining or owning a website name whether it is for business or personal use has become very popular. According to Verisign the Internet grew to more than 215 million domain names in second quarter of 2011. As of March of 2011 there are approximately 2,095,006,005 people online searching for or visiting those website names.

Getting, controlling and selling a website name has also risen in popularity. In 2010 the website name FB.com sold for $8.5 million dollars. Imagine being the lucky holder of that two letter gold nugget.

I hope this gives you a little better understanding of what a website name is. I’ll be posting more detailed information about websites and cool acronyms like TLDs, gTLDs and ccTLDs soon.

See you tomorrow.